The United Nations have, undoubtedly, won the ‘Total War’; they have brought Germany and Japan to their knees through ‘unconditional surrender’. But whether the Allies have won ‘Total Peace’ is still to be proved and demonstrated. The shameless burial of the Atlantic Charter even during the war, the setting up another League of Nations under a different ‘sign-board’, and the Potsdam Declaration before which Treaty of Versailles pales into insignificance, are not hopeful portents. As Wendell Willkie remarks, ‘nothing of importance can be won in peace, which has not already been won in war’.[1] The crucial test of the sincerity of the United Nations is India. “Britain,” observes Pearl Buck, “is a democracy fighting for its Empire”.[2] Nothing could be more complex than this phenomenon in human history, because democracy and imperialism are essentially incompatible. But Britain has been practising such double faced morality all the time, and it is idle to expect that she would ‘Quit India’ with good grace. Be that as it may, I have no manner of doubt that India will win her political freedom before long, despite Britain’s desire ‘to hold her own.’ In his ‘Shape of Things to Come,’ H.G. Wells visualises that the British grip on India will relax to nothing after ‘a brief convulsive phase of firmness’. I earnestly believe that this convulsive phase which has been so conspicuous during the last three years, is now at the fag end and that the present gloom and darkness will soon yield to the glorious dawn of Independence. Without freedom to a big and ancient Asiatic country like India, world peace is a sheer impossibility. A Slave India will be an ever growing menace to international harmony and goodwill. The world therefore cannot afford to deny her ‘the freedom to be free’.[3]
