Patience as a viceregal virtue

by Sir CHARLES PETRIE
The Viceroy at Bay by John Glendevon (Collins 50s.)
THIS book will appeal chiefly to a specialised public. but to that public it should make a very strong appeal. It tells the story of the latter days of flritish rule in India as seen through the eyes of the Marquess of Linlithgow who was Viceroy front 1936 to 1943. that is to say during a period of rapid transition: when he took up the appointment the façade appeared much the same as it had always done since the Crown took over the responsibility for the sub-continent from the East India Company ----when he left, although there were to be still two more British Viceroys, independence was just round the corner. The author is Lord Linlithgow's son.
Here we are shown how and why things went the way they did, and Lord Glendevon has undoubtedly made a real contribution to history in writing this book, not least because he has brought to light several factors which have tended to be ignored. He shows quite clearly, for instance, that the British Raj was crumbling from within as well as being 'the subject of incessant attacks from without. The spectacle of white men fighting each other in the First World War had not been lost upon the more thoughtful Indians. and when Britain drew on Indian support in that struggle---a step which she had scorned to take In the South African War— they formed their own conclusions, and they were not favourable to the administration in New Delhi.
Then we are told that the Indian Civil Service, upon which the whole regime depended, was below strength and deteriorating in quality. Nor had Lord Linlithgow apparently much confidence in the army chiefs, and with reason, as was to be shown when war came again, Their obsession with the North-West Frontier disconcerted him, and one morning during the winter of 1937/8 he was found lying on
the floor of his study with a map spread before him. "I believe", he said, "that our guns in Singapore are facing the wrong way." On this his son comments, He was to be dramatically justified by events."
In this weak position the Viceroy had to face a persistent, and often unscrupulous, campaign on the part of Gandhi and Nehru, with Jinnah, so to speak, skirmishing on ,his flank. The author shows considerable restraint in his description of his father's feelings towards Gandhi, but they are well expressed when he says that he "never underestimated Gandhi's political ability. In his dealings with the Mahatma he saw more of this than of his saintly qualities."
The Viceroy himself put the position quite succinctly when he wrote to King George VI, after a tribute to his courteous manner. "I judge him to be implacable in his hostility to British rule in India, to the destruction of which he has dedicated every fibre of his mind."
Above all, Lord Linlithgow was responsible to a government in London whose .members were increasingly absorbed first in the preparations for, and then in the conduct of, the Second World War, and who were consequently inclined to look at India and her problems from that point of view. Nor was he assisted in his dealings with the Nationalists by the fact that the Prime Minister during his later years in India had referred to Gandhi as "a naked fakir."
Lord Linlithgow left India in the middle of the Second World War, and he could not help being pessimistic about the future of the country on more than one score. He had always been an opponent of partition; yet it clearly lay ahead, and for this he blamed Gandhi and Congress.
He was not one of the greatest Viceroys, but he did not live in days that called for greatness from one in his position; .but he did possess infinite patience, and that was the quality most necessary on the part of a British ruler in India in his circumstances.