Winston Churchill's India had been out of print nearly sixty years when I had the privilege of republishing it in the first American edition. I am glad that RosettaBooks has now brought us this digital version of an important though frequently misunderstood chapter in Churchill's 15-million-word canon.
India was proposed by Churchill to Thornton Butterworth, his London publisher, on 21 March 1931: "They are very good speeches…. Of course I have taken much more trouble with them than with any book." Churchill's object was to garner support for his campaign against the India Bill, over which he had broken with his party leadership, believing these relatively modest reforms would lead to the loss of India to the British Empire.
Butterworth replied enthusiastically, promising to publish the book regardless of commercial viability because he believed in Churchill's cause—and possibly because he had just survived Churchill's threat to drop him in a dispute about royalties from The World Crisis. To the initial seven speeches, Churchill added three earlier addresses and a pithy introduction. To them, in this edition, we added Professor Manfred Weidhorn's thoughtful appraisal—both of quality and content—in this volume.
India was published in May 1931 in cloth and paperback; the same month saw a second impression, identical in content, though the paperback was now green not orange and the hardback was apparently restricted to the export market.
Eminently a product of its time, India was fast overtaken by what Churchill called the "Gathering Storm" of World War II. After the war, when publishers clamored for reissue of Churchill's earlier titles, he saw no reason to revive India. After all, the cause had been lost when the India Bill had passed Parliament in 1935. Churchill even sent Gandhi his best wishes for success, and lent tacit approval to Attlee's plan to grant India Dominion status (thus de facto independence) in 1948.
What Churchill did not approve was the sudden rush to quit India under Attlee's viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, who arbitrarily moved Britain's departure date up to August 1947. British authority ended before boundaries could be worked out between Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs; a vast shift of population occurred, amid bloody attacks by the various sides against each other. Later Churchill would exclaim to Mountbatten, "What you did in India was like striking me across the face with a riding crop."
For years India remained obscure, inaccessible to many, an unfortunate loss for students of rhetoric and political science. It is a delight to have it back.
Richard M. Langworth
Senior Fellow
Hillsdale College
