it’s little surprise that the Mahatma denounced the movement as a betrayal of hisprinciples. From what I had time to read, this is an issue which Shinde seems to have skated over.
The Parallel Government aside, not everyone toed the official Congress line. Letters intercepted by Special Branch often equate Britain with Hitler’s Germany and call for armed rebellion, even total war, against foreign rule. There are frequent reports of sabotage; and evidence of occasional direct attacks on British personnel, notably a bomb planted in a Poona cinema which killed a number of soldiers. As one might perhaps expect, the authorities describe as ‘terrorists’ all those seeking to resist their rule by such means. Perhaps more surprisingly to a modern eye, the term ‘terrorist’ is sometimes used as a badge of honour by nationalists themselves. Here’s a cyclostyle of May 1943 lamenting the death in a police raid of one Comrade Kotwal, described as ‘this brilliant terrorist … the immortal martyr of Maharashtra’.
Above all I’m struck by how vulnerable the Raj seemed to its supporters, especially after the fall of supposedly impregnable ‘Fortress Singapore’ to the Japanese in late 1941. There’s a recurrent note of panic in many of the letters opened by the censors after that event. A Hungarian Jew, recently escaped from Europe, complains that he’s escaped the frying pan only to fall into the fire of civil disorder in Bombay. In September 1942, a Russian in Goa writes to his brother: ‘One cannot help thinking that the world will be organized by Hitler … if he succeeds in breaking through in the Caucasus, in 2–3 months he will reach India and join the Japanese.’ Foreign nationals, British citizens and Indians alike, evidently believed at various times that the Japanese had already entered India through Assam, even that Bombay had been bombarded from the sea. Air-raid precautions were hastily improvised, and lines of retreat to the hill stations planned in detail. The government was sufficiently concerned about the Province’s porous coastline to set up watchtowers along the entire littoral, from Goa to Sindh, and introduced a system of licences for fishing-craft.
A bass note sounds through the authorities’ response to such developments – fear of a repeat of the great Indian ‘Mutiny’ of 1857, which for a time threatened to bring British rule to an end. In one report, they are exercised to catch the author of a message to an Indian soldier overseas, which confidently predicts that ‘on the 13 June, 1943, all of the Collectors [chief district administrators], wherever they are in India, will be killed.’ In Satara, the situation was growing grave. A magistrate writes in September 1942 that ‘the lives of the Government officials and property are in imminent danger … and public safety is in general danger.’ Things must have got much worse by the time Bill was posted there, more than a year later. I wonder if he was prey to such anxieties, and whether they influenced the way that Shinde alleges he behaved in villages like Chafal.
By the end of my first day’s digging, I’ve amassed three pages of useful notes, but found nothing on Bill’s actual dealings with the Parallel Government. Indeed there’s been surprisingly little reference altogether to the movement. And although I’ve come across excerpts from some police officers’ confidential weekly reports, there’s no sign of my father’s, even from the period when he officiated as DSP in Nasik, during his superior’s absence on leave. Thinking about it overnight, I decide to change tack. The following morning I consult Walawalkar, who now belatedly explains how the British organised their records. I ask to see the list. The headings include ‘Foreigners’, ‘Communal Troubles’, ‘Special Crimes’, ‘Native States’ and – the word leaps out – ‘Terrorism’. I suddenly intuit why the Parallel Government is barely
The Parallel Government aside, not everyone toed the official Congress line. Letters intercepted by Special Branch often equate Britain with Hitler’s Germany and call for armed rebellion, even total war, against foreign rule. There are frequent reports of sabotage; and evidence of occasional direct attacks on British personnel, notably a bomb planted in a Poona cinema which killed a number of soldiers. As one might perhaps expect, the authorities describe as ‘terrorists’ all those seeking to resist their rule by such means. Perhaps more surprisingly to a modern eye, the term ‘terrorist’ is sometimes used as a badge of honour by nationalists themselves. Here’s a cyclostyle of May 1943 lamenting the death in a police raid of one Comrade Kotwal, described as ‘this brilliant terrorist … the immortal martyr of Maharashtra’.
Above all I’m struck by how vulnerable the Raj seemed to its supporters, especially after the fall of supposedly impregnable ‘Fortress Singapore’ to the Japanese in late 1941. There’s a recurrent note of panic in many of the letters opened by the censors after that event. A Hungarian Jew, recently escaped from Europe, complains that he’s escaped the frying pan only to fall into the fire of civil disorder in Bombay. In September 1942, a Russian in Goa writes to his brother: ‘One cannot help thinking that the world will be organized by Hitler … if he succeeds in breaking through in the Caucasus, in 2–3 months he will reach India and join the Japanese.’ Foreign nationals, British citizens and Indians alike, evidently believed at various times that the Japanese had already entered India through Assam, even that Bombay had been bombarded from the sea. Air-raid precautions were hastily improvised, and lines of retreat to the hill stations planned in detail. The government was sufficiently concerned about the Province’s porous coastline to set up watchtowers along the entire littoral, from Goa to Sindh, and introduced a system of licences for fishing-craft.
A bass note sounds through the authorities’ response to such developments – fear of a repeat of the great Indian ‘Mutiny’ of 1857, which for a time threatened to bring British rule to an end. In one report, they are exercised to catch the author of a message to an Indian soldier overseas, which confidently predicts that ‘on the 13 June, 1943, all of the Collectors [chief district administrators], wherever they are in India, will be killed.’ In Satara, the situation was growing grave. A magistrate writes in September 1942 that ‘the lives of the Government officials and property are in imminent danger … and public safety is in general danger.’ Things must have got much worse by the time Bill was posted there, more than a year later. I wonder if he was prey to such anxieties, and whether they influenced the way that Shinde alleges he behaved in villages like Chafal.
By the end of my first day’s digging, I’ve amassed three pages of useful notes, but found nothing on Bill’s actual dealings with the Parallel Government. Indeed there’s been surprisingly little reference altogether to the movement. And although I’ve come across excerpts from some police officers’ confidential weekly reports, there’s no sign of my father’s, even from the period when he officiated as DSP in Nasik, during his superior’s absence on leave. Thinking about it overnight, I decide to change tack. The following morning I consult Walawalkar, who now belatedly explains how the British organised their records. I ask to see the list. The headings include ‘Foreigners’, ‘Communal Troubles’, ‘Special Crimes’, ‘Native States’ and – the word leaps out – ‘Terrorism’. I suddenly intuit why the Parallel Government is barely
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