This article was originally published on 22 February 1942 under the title ‘India Next’. It is George Orwell’s first, unsigned, contribution to The Observer. Reflecting on the piece in a 2003 article, Observer journalist Andrew Anthony said Indian independence was one of the writer’s preoccupations at the time, and that Orwell’s article is “very likely the paper’s first anti-colonial piece”
In ten of the blackest weeks in our national and imperial history one piece of really good news has passed almost unnoticed by the British public. This is the treaty recently signed between Britain and Abyssinia. Though there are several criticisms that could be levelled against it, the treaty does demonstrate that Britain's claim to be fighting for international decency is justified. The Italians annexed Abyssinia after a cowardly war of aggression, and the British fought to set it free: the inference ought to be obvious enough.
And yet in Asia, given our present policy, the propaganda value of the Abyssinian treaty is doubtful, or worse than doubtful. And meanwhile the Japanese pan-Asiatic propaganda, a thin disguise for an obviously predatory purpose, makes headway all over Asia, even among people who are hardly if at all deceived by it.
So far as southern Asia is concerned, there is probably no real answer to Japanese propaganda except military victories. India, however, is a different matter, and in India it is precisely those forces that have been most hostile to us in our imperial capacity which are our potential allies against Japan and against Fascist aggression generally.
It is easy for even the most ignorant person to grasp that Indian aspirations towards independence are menaced by the Japanese advance, and in addition, nearly all of the most gifted and active among Indian intellectuals are sympathetic towards China and Soviet Russia. Yet it remains true that Japanese propaganda makes headway. What answer can we make to the Japanese cry of "Asia for the Asiatics"? Only that the Japanese claims are lies and that Japanese rule would be worse than our own. It is true; but it is not inspiring. In a positive sense we promise nothing, we hold out no picture of the future. It is hardly to be wondered at if the poorer classes argue that they could not be worse off under the Japanese than they are at present, and sections of the intelligentsia are so blinded by hatred of Britain that they are half ready to betray Russia and China.
The one sure way of arousing [India's] enthusiasm is to convince them that Indian independence is possible if Britain wins the war, and impossible if Japan wins.
Meanwhile India, the second greatest population centre in the world, is not effectively in the war. The number of troops raised hitherto is relatively tiny, and war production is pitiful. This would be a serous matter even if the situation can be stabilised in Asia, but with the Japanese navy in the Indian Ocean and the German armies threatening the Middle East, India becomes the centre of the war - it is hardly an exaggeration to say, the centre of the world. For a long time to come, possibly for years, it may have to act as a supply base from which men and munitions of war can be poured out in two directions, east and west.
How is that huge effort to be made possible? Clearly we have got to win the enthusiasm of the peoples of India - their passive obedience is not enough. And the one sure way of arousing their enthusiasm is to convince them that Indian independence is possible if Britain wins the war, and impossible if Japan wins. We cannot do that by promises, nor by resounding phrases about liberty and democracy; we can only do it by some concrete unmistakable act of generosity, by giving something away that cannot afterwards be taken back. The Abyssinian treaty was a pointer in the right direction. It was a gesture of a kind that our enemies cannot emulate, and it can be repeated on a vaster scale in India.
The general lines of the settlement we should make in India are now clear enough. First, let India be given immediate Dominion status, with the right to secede after the war, if she so desires. Secondly, let the leaders of the principal political parties be invited at once to form a National Government, to remain in office for the duration of the war. Thirdly, let India enter into formal military alliance with Britain and the countries allied to Britain. Fourthly, let a trade agreement be drawn up for the exchange of necessary commodities and the reasonable protection of British interests, terminable some stated-number of years after the end of the war.
This plan seems less Utopian now than it would have seemed a year or two ago. There are obvious difficulties in its execution - the Hindu-Moslem rivalry is the most obvious - but the menace of outside attack makes this a propitious moment for getting over them. Both China and USSR would welcome a settlement along some such lines as these, and so would at any rate the bulk of American opinion. Our record in India is one of the easiest targets of the Isolationists. Above all, by such a settlement we should take the wind out of the sails of Axis propaganda, once and for all. By helping China and freeing India we should have appropriated "Asia for the Asiatics" to our own use and turned it from a lie into some- thing at least approaching a reality.
We have learned from the events in Malaya or at least that is the lesson we ought to have learned that to concede nothing is to lose everything. The implication of the treaties with Abyssinia and Iran is that a generous act performed at the right moment can substitute genuine partnership for the inherently unsatisfactory relationship of master and servant.
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