ABSTRACT
In a telegram to Prime Minister Winston Churchill dated 31 August 1942, Lord Linlithgow himself termed the 1942 insurrection ‘by far the most serious rebellion since that of 1857’. The ‘rebellion’ of 1857 and the 1942 Quit India ‘rebellion’ are in fact curiously comparable in a number of respects. In 1942, telegraphic messages between New Delhi and London could be exchanged in two hours. Yet the viceroy in New Delhi and the War Cabinet in London were increasingly disconnected. The viceroy and his advisers in New Delhi had themselves once been eager to eradicate the Congress and energize pro-British Indian politicians. Lord Linlithgow’s successor as viceroy, appointed in October of 1943, was Field Marshal Archibald Wavell, a self-made career military officer who had served since 1941 under Linlithgow as Commander-in-Chief of Allied forces in India. A puzzled Lord Linlithgow suspected Congress strategy behind the fact that events had not followed the expected course into Hindu-Muslim conflict.
