The Evening Star, July 5, 1947

"This Changing World"

"Partition of India Offers Red Leaders Chance for Infiltration and Intrigue"

(common theme in American coverage during this period, unsurprisingly)

#Partition1947
"The impending partition of India provides a subject for close scrutiny by policy-makers in Washington, who are concerned over the change which the creation of Hindustan and Pakistan will work on big power relationships throughout the world"
"Hitherto India has not possessed any independent influence in world affairs, although the frequent conflicts between the Hindu and Moslem communities and between each of them and Britain have had reverberations in other parts of the world"
"India's influence in world affairs has always been felt through the British Empire, which it provided with tremendous strength and resources, both in men and materials"
"India was particularly important to the Allied causes during World War II, and although she was officially at war with the Axis, the intense hatred among many of her factionalists for both Britain and the United States gave rise to something resembling a fifth column..."
"of the rear of the men fighting on the Burma front... As long as Britain was the dominant power in India the vacuum was filled and there was little danger of any heavy infiltration of influence from the Soviet Union to the north"
"With Britain out of India an ideal situation may exist for Soviet intrigue and exploitation. Russian aspirations in India are not new. under the Czars Russia made herself a source of constant worry to the British"
"Russian agents found their way into many of the northern and northwestern provinces. Today there is a nucleus of a large Communist Party in India, and there is a social structure-- with the remnants of the caste system-- which is vulnerable to Communist exploitation"
"The program of the Western nations in the future will embrace the task of winning the two new Indian states to the cause of democracy. Western democracy, as one bulwark against further Russian aggrandizement"
"This will not be easy, for the Orient traditionally has been devoted to authoritarian rather than democratic systems. But to survive, India must trade and for her own profit she can do best to hitch her wagon to the economic star of the West"
"The new American ambassador to India, Henry F. Grady, once was closely affiliated with the Reciprocal Trade Program of Cordell Hull. Perhaps it is with an eye to winning Hindustan and Pakistan to the economy of the West that he was sent to New Delhi"

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More from @vjgtweets

14 Aug
The Evening Star, June 15, 1947

A profile of Jinnah by Phillips Talbot, the erstwhile American ambassador to Greece turned journalist:

"One-Man Crusade Split India"

"Jinnah, Regarded by His Opponents as Unyielding Tyrant, Secured Separate Moslem State After 12-Year Fight"
"For Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the decision to carve a separate Moslem state out of India, approved here by the Moslem League Council, is a completely personal triumph"
"If chaos and disruption should result, the Moslem League president may have won a pyrrhic victory. Yet it will be his and his alone, whatever comes of it"
Read 25 tweets
14 Aug
Evening Star, September 24, 1947

In the aftermath of partition, a familiar complaint:

"India Embassy Calls Reports to U.S. on Rioting One-Sided"

"American reporters are largely concentrated about Delhi (in India)... therefore the picture they give is a one-sided one"
"I do not say that what they report is not true. But if you don't tell what is happening in West Punjab (in Pakistan), then the picture is out of focus"
"Mr. Sen said that many American newspapers 'are not printing dispatches from India which give the other side of the picture.'
Read 4 tweets
14 Aug
An interesting article found in the Romanul American (a Soviet-aligned publication for Romanian Americans based out of Detroit), published on August 30, 1947 on "India's Sham Liberation"
"A great deception is being prepared in Downing Street. Throughout the whole world is being trumpeted the news that on the 15th of August 1947 freedom is being granted to India--after having been under the dominion of Great Britain for some three centuries"
"Without a full knowledge of the facts surrounding this decision it is possible that many people will really believe that a revolution has come about in the attitude of Britain towards the colonial and oppressed people of the British Empire"
Read 13 tweets
12 Aug
“But one of the central decisions of the Nehru government was on this question: even though it sometimes did not abrogate its reformistic programmes, it decided to give them a bureaucratic rather than a mobilizational form” Image
“For the Congress leadership, clearly, the political task after assuming power was to demobilize its own movement, not to radicalize it further.” Image
Read 4 tweets
12 Aug
The Irish Standard, 1901

"A heathen Hindoo by the name of Bipin Chandra Pal addressed the Moral Education Society of Chicago the other day as follows: 'I am not ashamed of appearing before you as a heathen.'" Image
"'Heathen means one who is not a Christian, and I am not ashamed of confessing that I am not a Christian. If I had any doubt on the subject when I left India, my two years' residence in Christian England and Christian American have removed every bit of doubt'" Image
"I am prouder than ever of being a heathen, as distinguished from being a Christian.'"

"Well, there is very little difference between a heathen and a Christian, if the latter does not keep God's commandments.'"
Read 5 tweets
11 Aug
One way to think about this is to see "South Asianism" as a debased desi version of the "negritude" movement that emerged among Francophone African intellectuals in the metropole in the early-mid 20th century. 1/n
Negritude (or "blackness") was an aesthetic and literary movement that blossomed across the African diaspora, from Paris, to Harlem and the Caribbean. However, despite its lofty goal of resisting colonial domination, it was fundamentally constrained politically. 2/n
Although early votaries came from different countries, they were bound in the metropole by their shared disdain for colonial dominance and--critically-- the homogenizing effect of French racism towards Africans. 3/n
Read 14 tweets

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