Victor Hope, Lord Linlithgow

Background and appointment

Victor Hope, Lord Linlithgow, had chaired a royal commission on Indian agriculture in the late 1920s and held other public roles before his appointment as Viceroy of India in 1936, a term extended beyond the usual five years because of the war and which made him, at more than seven years, the longest-serving Viceroy in the history of British India. His tenure coincided with the introduction of provincial autonomy under the Government of India Act 1935, under which Congress ministries took office in a majority of British Indian provinces from 1937.

Declaration of war and Congress resignations

In September 1939, following the outbreak of the Second World War, Linlithgow declared India to be at war with Germany as a matter of imperial prerogative, without consulting Indian political leaders or the Central Legislative Assembly. This unilateral declaration was widely resented across the political spectrum, including by the Indian National Congress, which held that a country not consulted about entering a war could not be said to have entered it as a free partner. In protest, Congress ministries in the provinces resigned in late 1939, ending the period of provincial self-government under Congress and leaving those provinces under direct gubernatorial rule for the remainder of the war.

The Muslim League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah, by contrast, marked the Congress resignations with a "Day of Deliverance," and Linlithgow's subsequent dealings with Jinnah and the League — including his willingness to treat the League as a party whose consent was necessary for any constitutional settlement — are generally seen by historians as having strengthened the League's political standing relative to the Congress during the war years, at a time when the League was pressing its demand for a separate Muslim state, formally articulated in the Lahore Resolution of 1940.

Despite the political estrangement of the Congress, India under Linlithgow's administration made a very large material and manpower contribution to the British war effort, supplying troops, matériel and finance to campaigns in North Africa, East Africa, the Middle East and, from 1941–42, against Japan; the Indian Army expanded many times over during the war to become one of the largest volunteer forces in history.

The August Offer and Cripps Mission

As the war continued, Linlithgow's government made limited proposals intended to secure Indian political cooperation, notably the "August Offer" of 1940, which promised eventual dominion status and expansion of the Viceroy's Executive Council but fell well short of nationalist demands and was rejected by Congress. A more substantial initiative, the Cripps Mission of 1942, led by British minister Stafford Cripps and offering a post-war path to dominion status with a right for provinces to opt out, also failed to secure Congress agreement, chiefly over the question of immediate versus post-war transfer of power and the extent of British control during the war.

Quit India and mass arrests

Following the failure of the Cripps Mission and amid deteriorating wartime conditions, including the fall of Burma and the resulting proximity of the Japanese advance to India's borders, the Congress launched the Quit India Movement in August 1942, demanding an immediate end to British rule. Linlithgow's government responded with the immediate mass arrest of the entire senior Congress leadership, including Gandhi and Nehru, who remained imprisoned for most of the war's remaining duration, and suppressed the widespread unrest, strikes and sabotage that followed with considerable force, including the use of troops and, in some areas, aerial strafing of crowds. Linlithgow himself privately described the 1942 uprising as the most serious internal challenge to British rule in India since the Revolt of 1857, though the two events differed greatly in character and scale, and the comparison reflects the alarm the movement caused within his government rather than a close historical parallel. With the Congress leadership imprisoned and its organisation banned in many provinces, the movement lacked centralised direction for the remainder of the war, though scattered underground and armed resistance activity continued in some regions.

Bengal famine

The Bengal famine of 1943 began during the final months of Linlithgow's viceroyalty, following a cyclone that damaged the province's rice crop in late 1942, the loss of rice imports from Japanese-occupied Burma, and wartime inflation and procurement pressures. Historians have generally been critical of the pace and adequacy of his central government's response to the developing food crisis in Bengal, including its handling of inter-provincial grain trade restrictions and delayed recognition of the crisis's severity, though responsibility for the famine is shared among the provincial government of Bengal, the central government in Delhi, and wartime decisions taken in London, and remains a subject of ongoing historical assessment. Linlithgow was succeeded as Viceroy by Lord Wavell in October 1943, shortly after which relief efforts, including military-assisted grain transport, intensified and conditions began to ease.