LONDON: Winston Churchill, Britain’s World War II prime minister, was prepared to let Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi starve to death if he went on hunger strike while interned during the war, archives released on Sunday in London showed. He thought Gandhi should be dealt with like any other detainee if he refused food.

Churchill’s tough line was recorded during war cabinet meetings, which also showed Britain’s confusion over how to handle the charismatic Indian leader’s stance of peaceful opposition. The notes record Churchill as saying Gandhi should stay in detention and ‘let him do as he likes’.

Deputy cabinet secretary Sir Norman Brook’s notes reveal ministers wondered whether Gandhi as a martyr would lead to a mass uprising in India — and embarrassment for Britain.

However, they did not want to free Gandhi and allow him to campaign against the war and British rule while the crown colony was under the threat of Japanese invasion.

Gandhi was held for two years at the Aga Khan’s Palace in Pune, western India, from Aug 1942 after slamming India’s involvement in the war and calling for civil disobedience.

India’s viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, sent ministers a telegram stating he was ‘strongly in favour of letting (Gandhi) starve to death’ if he went on hunger strike.

However, officials in London worried that the backlash would be too powerful.

Lord Halifax, the ambassador to the United States and a former viceroy of India and foreign secretary, told cabinet the day after Gandhi’s Aug 9 arrest in Mumbai: “Whatever the disadvantages of letting him out, his death in detention would be worse.”

Ministers decided in Jan 1943 that although they could not be seen to cave in to a hunger strike, they would free him on compassionate grounds were he likely to die.

Sir Stafford Cripps, minister for aircraft production — who the previous year had failed to reach an agreement with Gandhi that would secure Indian loyalty to the war effort — said: “He is such a semi-religious figure that his death in our hands would be a great blow and embarrassment to us.”—AFP