forced Churchill to declare in the House of Commons the following
month that this did not, of course, apply to India or the other British
colonies. This was not the American interpretation; and the presence in
Delhi from April 3, 1942 of President Roosevelt’s personal representative,
Colonel Louis Johnson, was a matter of some irritation to the Conservative
establishment, who felt that Johnson was encouraging the Indians to
demand independence. Immediately upon his arrival, Johnson involved
himself in the Cripps negotiations and established a firm rapport with
Cripps and, more disturbingly, with Nehru.
Secretary of State Leo Amery believed that America had its eye on
the British Empire’s markets in a post-war trading world in which
the US could play the role of free-trade imperialist that the British had
been able to play in the nineteenth century. Amery’s view was that even
an eventually independent India must be encouraged to remain in a
trading bloc based on the British Empire and Commonwealth after
the war; he was close to circles in British politics that had long argued
that the Commonwealth and Empire should become an economic part-
nership and a trading bloc rather than a system of political domination- white colonies first, then native dependencies would voluntarily become
members as they ‘progressed’ into self-governing dominions. Churchill’s
views were not quite so sympathetic. Comforting his fellow Conservative,
Linlithgow, on the eve of Cripps’s visit to India, Churchill wrote: ‘It would
be impossible, owing to unfortunate rumours and publicity, and the
general American outlook, to stand on a purely negative attitude and
the Cripps Mission is indispensable to prove our honesty of purpose...If
that is rejected by the Indian parties... our sincerity will be proved to
the world.’^16
Whether or not the Cripps Mission was actually designed to fail,
therefore, in Churchill’s eyes it was more a public relations gesture than a
concession. The Cripps proposals offered post-war dominion status with
the right to secede from the Empire if India so desired. The Cripps pro-
posals also recognised individual provinces’ right to opt out of an eventual
post-war Indian union – the first official recognition of a potentially
divided India – a ‘Pakistan’. This was a necessary concession to the Muslim
League to secure their agreement in any settlement. For the present,
Cripps promised the Congress a quasi-Cabinet; Defence would have an
Indian in charge, although actual military matters would still be in the
hands of the commander-in-chief. This would, he felt, show sincerity of
114 THE END OF THE RAJ