INDIA: Wavell and the Golden Throne

At New Delhi last week, Viscount Wavell of Cyrenaica and Winchester took office as India’s 19th Viceroy. The ceremony was as simple as Lord Wavell’s brisk arrival by plane, as austere as the task he now faces.

Not till the viceregal flag broke out over the palace dome was the public aware that Field Marshal Lord Wavell had mounted the golden throne. Within jasper-columned Durbar Hall, he had taken the three great oaths: 1) the oath of allegiance to King-Emperor George VI; 2) the oath as Governor-General of British India; 3) the oath of Viceroy representing the Crown to the autonomous Indian States. In that nine-minute ceremony, he had also attained a sumptuous $10,000,000 palace; a job paying in salary and expenses about $280,000 a year; the top appointive post in all the British Empire’s glittering hierarchy; direct power unrivaled by any king on earth, rivaled only by a few dictators; and a set of administrative burdens in scale with his viceregal grandeur.

The Bellies. Heaviest of the burdens was the oldest one—the weight of India’s 390,000,000 Moslems and Hindus of many castes, divided amongst themselves, in chronic ferment against the British Raj and all that the Viceroy represents. Lord Wavell had followed monolithic Lord Linlithgow, the outgoing and unregretted 18th Viceroy, into office at a time when the Raj was at its lowest point yet in both Indian and British esteem. Many of India’s millions, ordinarily unstirred by and unaware of the political issues which engross the articulate minority, felt in their bellies a failure of the Raj. They were starving.

Famine gripped large areas of India (TIME, Oct. 18). Three days after his inauguration, Field Marshal Lord Wavell announced that he would visit hunger-plagued Calcutta, where whole families were dying on the streets. The Bengal Government was one of several provincial Governments which had dallied at commandeering rice crops and stocks, and distributing them to the hungry. Lord Wavell has the power to do so for all of India, and the Central Government has already threatened to override dilatory provincial authorities if necessary. But, even with the utmost vigor on his part, a solution will be difficult.

Cure and Spot. Last month Lord Wavell announced in England a three-point India policy. The points, in the order of importance and timing which he assigned them, were: 1) the organization of India for the complete defeat of Japan; 2) the raising of social standards throughout India; 3) the gradual transfer of political power to Indian hands.

Lord Wavell’s bluntness in putting Indian independence last on the list showed no desire to placate anyone. It did show a realistic approach to the fact that India is an important Allied military base as well as a shaky pillar of Empire. But the same bluntness was bound to alienate many Indians before he had mounted the throne. Indians could—and did—point out that a starving India could be neither an efficient base nor a willing ally. With no real evidence as yet, they were already branding him as another imperialist whipping master. And many Britons at home, horrified at the failure of the Raj to control the famine, were loud-voiced for the release of the Congress leaders jailed by Linlithgow, the removal of Indian Secretary Leopold Amery.

The hero of Cyrenaica had been in some tough spots, had won triumphs and survived reverses in Africa and Greece. On the golden throne of the Viceroy, he was in the toughest spot in all the Empire.

The Imponderable Mr. Bose

In Singapore last week a “provisional government of India” was set up by the Japanese. Its chief: Subhas Chandra Bose, ex-President of the Indian National Congress. Its first intention to declare war on Britain and the U.S.

Cherub-faced lady-killer Bose has long been a friend to the Axis. In 1941, faced with prosecution by the British, he fled India, later cropped up wining & dining with Axis leaders in Berlin and Tokyo, plumped for Fascism. Broadcasting to discontented India over Axis frequencies, Bose once said: “… In December 1941… but one cry arose from the lips of the brave soldiers of Nippon: ‘On to Singapore!’ Comrades, let your battle cry be ‘On to Delhi!”