Churchill & India

Question 1

Why did Churchill like India?

Answer 1

• He served in Bombay India in 1896
• He believed it was the “jewel of the crown”
• He believed in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority

Question 2

What was British Indian rule like?

Answer 2

• India wanted self-government 1930-30.
• Rowlatt Act 1919 - imprisonment without trial
• Montagu-Chelmford measures - gave local councils power to rebuke these imprisonments
• 1933 India was given self governing rights
• India Act 1935 (set in 1937) expanded electorate to 35 million ( out of 338 million)

Question 3

Opposition to British rule?

Answer 3

• Opposition led by Gandhi.
• He developed “satyagraha” which means “holding into truth”.
• Non-violent protests
• April 1919 - Led mass campaign against the Rowlatt’s act (Troupes fired on a crowd at Amristan killing 400 and wounding 1200
• 1930, Gandhi led a mass march against the salt tax, and collected natural salt from the sea. He was imprisoned.
• Freed in 1930-31, to attend conference in London. After little sucess, he returned and was arrested.

Question 4

Why would it have been a good idea to give India self-governing powers?

Answer 4

• Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa had all been given self-governing rights. Yet in WW1 they were loyal to the brits.
• Separate the moderates from the radicals in India

Question 5

Effects of Churchill’s resistance?

Answer 5

• Stanley Baldwin undermined Churchill in his speeches. He is conservative leader. Mocking references to Churchill’s view.
• Churchill was bitter in his attacks on government ministers over the India reform proposals in 1934. This led to Leo Amery MP saying that Churchill had an “unique achievement to stir up a hornets’ nest where there were no hornets”.
• Churchill threatened to make the Conservative party shatter, as a ploy to convince Sir Samuel Hoare, the Secretary for India, resign. This won him the distrust of Conservative MPs and leaders alike.
  Churchill changed his viewpoint when India won its self-governing rights.

Question 6

When did Ramsay Macdonald win the general election for labour?

Answer 6

May 1929

Question 7

What did Ramsay Macdonald winning the general election mark the beginning of?

Answer 7

Churchill’s “wilderness years”

Question 8

When did Stanley Baldwin become prime minister?

Answer 8

1935

Question 9

What was a more obscure reason for why Churchill was isolated from politics?

Answer 9

He was loyal to a small group of eccentric advisers, like Fredrick Lindemann

Question 10

Quote from Churchill’s speech in Royal Albert Hall in March 1931?

Answer 10

“India is no more a political personality than Europe. It is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the equator.”

Question 11

Churchill’s opinion on Gandhi?

Answer 11

“malignant subversive fanatic”

Question 12

Quote from Geoffrey Best on Churchill in 1930s

Answer 12

“To most of the British Government’s policies vis-à-vis India Churchill took emphatic exception.”

Question 13

How many Indian soliders fought in WW1?

Answer 13

Over 1 million

Question 14

Bolshevism

Answer 14

The communist regime, as seen in Russia from 1917. This terrified Churchill.

Question 15

Resistance to British Rule from educated elite?

Answer 15

They had been campaigning since 1880s.

Question 16

What Indian political party was formed in 1885?

Answer 16

Indian National Congress

Question 17

Why didn’t the Indian National Congress appeal to the general public of India until Gandhi?

Answer 17

It was founded by the elite. They were educated in Britain.

Question 18

Violence in India that Churchill believed the Imperial Rule was preventing?

Answer 18

Hindus and Muslims

To abandon India to the rule of the Brahmins would be an act of cruel and wicked negligence. It would shame for ever those who bore its guilt. These Brahmins who mouth and patter the principles of Western Liberalism… are the same Brahmins who deny the primary rights of existence to nearly sixty million of their own fellow countrymen whom they call ‘Untouchable’.

Question 19

Who were the “untouchables”?

Answer 19

Those deemed impure by the caste system

Question 20

Who introduced the Rowlatt’s act?

Answer 20

Imperial Legislative Council

Question 21

Rowlatt’s act?

Answer 21

March 1919

Certain political cases could be tried without a jury

Suspects could be imprisoned without trial

Restrictions were placed on the press

Question 22

What was the aim of the Montagu-Chelmsford Act?

Answer 22

To nullify nationalist sentiment. The act gave provincial governments increased autonomy over some issues

Conservatives viewed this as too far. For Indians it was a small reform.

Question 23

Other name for Amristar Massacre?

Answer 23

Jallianwala Bagh

Question 24

Who led the protest against the Rowlatt’s act?

Answer 24

Gandhi (April 1919)

Question 25

Why did riots form in Amristar after Gandhi’s protests?

Answer 25

Indian nationalist leaders were arrested

Question 26

Response to riots in Amristar?

Answer 26

Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer was sent to stop the movement. His troupes opened fire after the warning that they would use force to disband.

Historian Mihir Bose claims that they only stopped because they “ran out of ammunition”.

Question 27

Churchill’s response to Amristar massacre?

Answer 27

Spoke in the House of Commons as Secretary of War:
He said it was ‘an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation.’

Question 28

Opinion of former Prime Minister on Amristar Massacre?

Answer 28

Former Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith
“It is one of the worst outrages in the whole of our history.”

Question 29

What happened to Reginald Dyer?

Answer 29

He was sacked.

A pro-Imperialist newspaper (the Morning Post) raised £26,000 for Dyer on his return to Britain.

Question 30

Example of Churchill’s use of journalism?

Answer 30

By November 1929, Churchill had written a long piece in the Daily Mail in opposition to the policies of his own party. This was in responses made in October 1929, by Lord Irwin, Governor-General of India.

Question 31

When does Churchill comment on Gandhi as a “A Seditious Middle Temple Lawyer”?

Answer 31

When Churchill discovered that Irwin had officially received Gandhi at the Vice-Regal palace in Delhi.

Question 32

A statement Ramsay released about Churchill after one of his speeches to the Indian Empire Society?

Answer 32

“Blind to every movement in politics”
- The Times