The British approach towards independence in India and Pakistan 1939-47

Abstract

Down to 1939, British policy towards India followed the Tennysonian ideal of"Freedom slowly broadening down from precedent to precedent". The second world war violently accelerated the process. As early as October 1939, Lord Zetland, then Secretary of State for India, presented a memorandum to the War Cabinet which stated "When parliament accepted dominion status as the goal, the feeling was that the journey was a long one but the effect of the war has been to bring us hard up against the implications of dominion status!! On 1 December, Zetland wrote to Neville Chamberlain War on the grand scale seems to be accompanied by the churning up of the ocean of thought.....I do not believe that the picture of India moving towards the goal, which we have set before her, by smooth, measured and leisurely stages which is what we have hitherto had in mind- is likely to be realised".