India, Pakistan and the Commonwealth [1957]

THIS PAPER WAS broadcast on the BBC’s English-language Asian service on 14 August 1957-the eve of the tenth anniversary of independence for India and Pakistan. The script was recorded in both English and German at a studio in Bangor on 20 July. It has not appeared in print until now. According to Lindley Fraser, head of the BBC’s German Service, the recording would be aired on “a programme of a similar type” on the day of the anniversary itself (29 June 1957, RA REC. ACQ. 1,351b). Russell had been asked to contribute to a broadcast for this occasion by London Calling Asia’s Hallam Tennyson, a great-nephew of the Victorian poet laureate. This programme was to conclude with recorded statements from Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Nehru’s sister and India’s High Commissioner in London, and Begum Liaquat, widow of Pakistan’s first Prime Minister. The message from Russell, meanwhile, would “represent the British point of view” (9 May 1957). As chairman of the India League in the 1930s and a staunch friend of post-independence India, he was an obvious and uncontroversial choice for such a role. On 23 May Tennyson wrote Russell to confirm what had been settled at their meeting in London the day before:

You agreed to prepare a two-three minute script outlining the change in attitude that has taken place in your lifetime on the part of people in Britain in their conception of the Commonwealth, if possible ending with a glance at the future and your own interpretation of the significance of the multi-racial association which the Commonwealth has become.