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Rheea Saggar, Fighting retreat: Churchill and India, International Affairs, Volume 100, Issue 4, July 2024, Pages 1807–1808, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae147
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In Fighting retreat, Walter Reid looks at Winston Churchill's views on India under British rule to address a central paradox: why was Churchill, for the most part, liberal towards Britain's other colonies but not towards India? What explains Churchill's hostility towards the country? Reid explores Churchill's relationship with India across four phases. Initially, Churchill lived in India as a young officer, which etched a lasting impression of the country on him. Thereafter, during the First World War, he began to adopt somewhat liberal views towards the colonies. The India Bill (1935), which subsequently paved the way to India's self-government, caused him to adopt a more extreme stance. Finally, as prime minister in the 1940s, Churchill vehemently opposed Indian independence. Through these periods, Churchill's interactions with India reflected a complex interplay of personal experiences and political ideologies.
The book has two stories running in parallel that help unpack Churchill's views on India. Reid assesses Churchill's role in some of the most significant episodes from India's years as a British colony, including the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (1919), the Bengal famine during the Second World War and Stafford Cripps's mission to India to discuss a draft constitution for India (1942). Simultaneously, the author gives readers a rich view of what was happening in Britain, and how Churchill navigated and often vehemently disagreed with many in London about the India ‘problem’. Through these parallel accounts, Reid successfully shows how Churchill's views on India were inextricably linked to his perception of the British empire. Churchill saw India's independence as a sign of the gradual death of Britain's imperial greatness and this interlinkage is key to understand Churchill's hostility towards the country. However, Churchill held otherwise apparently liberal and benevolent views on colonial subjects, since India contributed to the empire in ways that no other colonies did.
