Till well into the Second World War the British never allowed even
an American diplomat near the Indian capital. Surely
American Consulate was
opened in Calcutta in 1972 and two more were
added later in Bombay and Madras but their function was strictly
confined to commerce. Even other wise America’s
contact with India was scant
while Americans, especially missionaries, travelled in hoards to China. Towards
the end of 1930s a think-tank in New York
thought of sending a scholar to India
to explore the dynamics of the diverse and complex subcontinent. The scholar
was the young and ambitious reporter named Phillips Talbot. His task was to
write reports and assessments which were not meant for publishing. This book is
a collection of his “letters” to his boss written from 1938, the year in which
Phillip Talbot took the annual training course in London for the ICS, till 1950. The compilation
is an insightful and lucid essay on Indian
history of that volatile period
leading up to independence and Partition of the country into India and Pakistan. Eleven
years after
returning home from India,
Phillip Talbot served as assistant secretary of state for new East and South Asia in the Kennedy administration. Both John
Kenneth Galbraith and Chester Bowles had recommended him to JFK. The credit of
exhuming Tolbot’s despatches from storage goes to Indian historian B.R.Nanda,
who has contributed a thoughtful foreword that adds to the book’s value. He
draws attention to the interesting perceptive profiles of Indian leaders
including Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, C. Rajagopalachari and Jinnah whom Phillip
Talbot had met. Though young in age Talbot’s judgments proved penetrating and
accurate. He was convinced that at the end of the war Britain would be too
exhausted to sustain its empire and would have no option but to leave India The
only question that engaged his mind was whether there would be one successor government
or two In the midst of the Quit India Movement (1942), he predicted that there
would be ‘no violent revolt against the
British’, but, because of antagonism
between the Congress and the Muslim League violence would be immense Having visited Gandhi’s ashram, met Nehru at
various Congress gatherings, interviewed Jinnah at the Lahore session of the
Muslim League where the Pakistan resolution was passed, witnessed the Great
Calcutta Killings as a result of the League’s Direct Action in august 1046, travelled
with the Mahatma in Noakhali in April 1947 and, above all, seen the massacres
on both sides of the divide, together with the largest mass migration in peace
time in history before and after the ‘tryst
with destiny’ , Phillip Talbot concluded, “it would have been better if the
British had gone some years earlier” Talbot’s deep relationship with India did
not end with that of the Kennedy administration that was inherited virtually
unchanged by Linden Johnson.. As President of Asia society for long years he
kept his contacts warm and visited India and neighbouring countries
often This has enabled him to pen a brief After Word on how the region looks like
on the 60th anniversary of independence.. His verdict on this country is, “India has not
only confirmed its regional pre-eminence but has become a significant all-Asian
and global presence. Domestically, its democratic political system, though
challenged at one moment by Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s emergency rule, has survived
as the sturdy framework of participatory government.”
He adds, “Pakistan
has not been so fortunate. Its long sequence of authoritarian governments under
both military and civilian rulers has reflected the profound problems of an
inadequately organised state. He could not have been more right.