13 - World War II Legacies for India

Summary

Modern India was born out of the ashes of World War II. For more than a hundred years before the war India had no international personality, or had only a notional one when the British needed another signatory to the Peace of Versailles or an extra vote at the League of Nations. The war changed all that. Though other factors were at work, the timing and manner of India's midnight tryst with destiny — the transfer of power on 14–15 August 1947 — were largely the result of the tectonic shifts that altered the contours of the world after six searing years of conflict.

The India that emerged was hungry, bankrupt and in ferment. It had very little industry because of the “desire to keep India as a market for British manufactured goods after the war”, as Lord Mountbatten noted when his wartime request for large-scale parachute production in India was turned down. Sixty years later, India's rulers are still grappling with the residue of some of those problems. Regardless of the political party they might belong to, they find it unacceptable that the global balance of power as reflected in the composition of the United Nations Security Council, the constitution and operations of international economic and financial agencies and the distribution of nuclear weapons shou to reflect the war's outcome. Ironically, India was technically one of the victorious nations in 1945. But that does not mean that it either enjoys or approves of the spoils of victory.

While the victors of World War I sought to crush their vanquished enemies, the victors of World War II tried to establish their own permanent supremacy, albeit in a polity that institutions like the United Nations and the World Bank tried to make more equitable. It was the creation of a new two-tier world order.