Page 70 - EW February 2023

Books

Churchill CHURCHILL AND INDIA: sought to exile Gandhi to
a desert island arguing
conundrum MANIPULATION OR BETRAYAL that the Congress wanted
Kishan S. Rana
to replace British rule
ROUTLEDGE with “Brahmin domina-
HILE THE Rs.995 tion which would threaten
title of his book Pages 192 Muslims and the op-
WChurchill and pressed castes with extinc-
India: Manipulation or tion”. In 1935, he spoke of
Betrayal? is puzzling (in being a “sincere admirer…
that the alternatives seem annotations almost ana- The author discerns of the heroic efforts” that
to be in contradiction to tomical, each finger of fact four distinct phases Gandhi was making for
each other) and preemp- pointing in the direction in Churchill's India’s depressed people.
tively conclusive, its narra- of a defined determination association with India This was only one in a
tive is not, unfolding point while remaining organi- between 1896 and conundrum of contradic-
by seamless point towards cally linked to the body 1965, when he was tions that informs the
a final set of hypotheses. of the work in its whole. given a state funeral many perceptions Kishan
That the book emerged, He discerns four distinct in London Rana diligently gleans.
as the author says, from phases in Churchill’s That “Churchill did not
‘quasi isolation’ during the association with India: seek out any Indian intel-
pandemic may explain its beginning as ‘romantic knowledge, our law, and lectual, even as a casual
self-interrogatory nature, adventurer’ on his first our higher civilization, in interlocutor, much less for
questions asked, alter- landing on the subconti- process of time, into one serious discourse on the
native answers offered nent in 1896, continuing great, united people; and life questions that deeply
(although in the end it is with ‘benign but superficial to offer to all the nations of engaged him”; had he done
‘reader, you decide’) much empathy’ until 1920, then the West the advantages of so, “he might have seen
in the manner, one imag- two decades of “tempest, tranquility and progress in another India, one that he
ines, of the discussions of extravagant, unreason- the East”. had never imagined”. That
and debates in the Yan Jin ing hostility to India”, But for Winston he was hostage to “superfi-
club of young diplomats followed by his 1940-45 Churchill, as this work cial, outdated, half-under-
of which the author was a prime ministership, “the makes clear, all that mat- stood concepts, buttressed
member when posted in years of manipulation, tered was the gallery. The neither by a study of facts
China in the early sixties. plus attempted subversion supposed convictions nor subsequent revisits
That solitude may well of Indian independence”, that prompted him, in to his own assumptions,
have contributed also to and finally, his last twenty 1904, to cross the floor in much less checking these
the leisured lyricism in years, “mellower, but not a Parliament, opposing a against ground realities”.
much of the writing, com- whit apologetic”. bill he said reflected racial And yet, Churchill
pelling disagreement with Through that life, he prejudice against Jews, “insightfully assessed (the
the author’s assertion that sought reassurance in the saw no reflection in the ability of Indians) to adapt
“presented here in a para- loneliness of his oratory views he was to express on and thrive in the environ-
phrased mode, Churchill’s and writing, including in Kenya that “there was no ment of different lands”
strong, direct words lose the “imaginary dialogue question of granting elec- in which the author sees
their force; such narra- between his father and toral rights to the ‘naked “perhaps one of the earliest
tives must be read in the himself, centered on (his) savages of the Kikuyu and British tributes to the In-
original”. Kishan Rana’s life achievements”, a the Kavirondo”’, precur- dian diaspora… prescient
versions soar. tribute to a remote but af- sor, as Kishan Rana notes, anticipation of today’s ‘glo-
The author allows fectionate parent whom he of his “India ways, with balisation’, future competi-
characters (includ- lost on 24 January 1895, imaginary, scary fiction… tion in the Western world
ing Churchill’s parents, 70 years before the day of racist even by the norms of through ‘Asiatic commer-
friends, loves, political his own death. Randolph his times” and his felicity cial ambition’.
allies and adversaries Churchill's vision for India in damning with barely The larger commercial
and the vast landscape of was everything his son’s perceptible praise, and argument, the author
people in India so critical was not, personified in “half growls”, (‘primitive suggests, deserves more at-
to the story) to animate his call “to weld (Indians) but agreeable races’). In tention than it has usually
its pages, with extensive by the influence of our 1931, a published speech received. While India was a

70 EDUCATIONWORLD FEBRUARY 2023