Nehru emerged from prison after over 13 months of solitude and
isolation in December 1941, to be faced with major changes in the war
situation. On June 22, 1941, Germany had attacked the Soviet Union,
ending the uneasy peace of the Nazi–Soviet Pact. In December, Japan
attacked the United States at Pearl Harbour, and Germany declared war
on the USA. Writing for the London Daily Herald, Nehru confessed that
his prison term had put him out of touch with events and political
perspectives: ‘Individual opinions may be expressed but they will lack the
reality which contact with people and a living situation gives them. I am
seeking to regain these contacts.’^15
The British response to the entry of the USSR into the war on the
allied side was to legalise the Communist Party of India. The hope was
that its campaign for a ‘People’s War’ against the fascist powers would
serve the British need to find some sort of support base for its war effort
in India. But officials remained extremely suspicious of the CPI, who they
expected to use the opportunity to campaign both against fascists as
the immediate and interim enemy and against imperialism as the major
enemy to be fought next. The CPI in turn was far from willing to be a
puppet of the British government. Moreover, its rank and file member-
ship, at least, if not sections of the leadership, were not altogether willing
to fall in behind leads from the USSR at all times, as subsequent events in
1942 were to show.
By early 1942, a Japanese invasion of India seemed impending;
the Japanese advance through South-East Asia had absorbed Malaya
and Burma in February and March, and seemed inexorably to lead on to
India. There was an urgent need for Indian support. This was no longer
only a question of supplies, though supplies themselves were important
enough (India was the main source of supplies for the Middle Eastern and
North African as well as the South-East Asian theatres of war, and the base
for airlifts to China, in addition to providing armed forces; since suppliers
were mostly in the private sector, the profit motive could be relied upon
to keep supplies coming). If India were to be lost, the war seemed all but
over for the Allies.
But in the event of a Japanese invasion, it was not impossible that the
Indian population would welcome the Japanese as liberators. Refugees
among Indians who had worked in South-East Asia had brought back
reports of British forces running away from the Japanese rather than
fighting; evacuation had been organised on a racial basis with all safe112 THE END OF THE RAJ