The British who got that tax revenue, at the end of WWII ended up owing around £1 billion to the Indian government by 1945.
Freeing up British Army contingents from the sub continent, would allow them to be placed elsewhere whilst saving money, a significant number of British divisions were tied up during world war two on the North West frontier province.
Not sure I understand this. There was no Indian government in 1945 so how did the British end up owing them 1 billion? What are the details of this transaction?
Again the British divisions in India you are talking about were mostly Indian soldiers. If India had become independent they would have become part of the Indian army. And the British wouldn’t have had the services of 2 million plus Indian soldiers who were paid for with Indian tax revenue.
This is an error, my apologies, I misinterpreted Sterling Debt as a debt incurred to India, rather than a debt incurred in running India. It surmounted to £1 billion.
As for the military contribution, I agree that a a significant portion were Indian, however, at any one time there were 70,000 British troops in India as a garrison force, of which were well trained, and of which if allocated to other more pressing theatres of war, would of made up for some of the man power which India provided, troops who were well trained.
Dislocating India from the Empire earlier would have a knock on effect in freeing up resources to be used against the Axis powers as other areas which were occupied to defend India would be not needed anymore (i.e Aden, Oman, Egypt) most of these protectorates and colonies were created in justification of defending India from anyone trying to threaten it.
Can you give details of these 70,000 troops? Were they British citizens or just divisions in the British Indian army which consisted mostly of Indian soldiers? How long were they in India? Egypt clearly had a major strategic importance beyond just defending India and I seriously doubt there were many British troops troops in place like Aden and Oman during the war.
The bottom line is the British mobilized a massive amount of military resources from India both in terms of men and material. Only a fraction of them were spent actually defending India while the rest fought in Africa, Burma and Italy. In net terms India was a major contributor to the war effort.
Of course, Burma was part of India.
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?
Why are we assuming that? The OP doesn’t.
Posts 2, 3, 6, and 10 all do.
I read those posts as expressing their opinion that India would have been a neutral country, not assuming it. 2 and 6 even use the word “probably”.
Actually Burma was separated from British India in 1937.
And in the hypothetical, India gets independence in 1935.
Yes but I was talking about India’s net contribution to the war effort in WW2. I thought your point was that Burma was a part of India at that time and my point was that it wasn’t.
Ok. There are many people here who need to read up about the politics of that time beyond a quick skim read of wikipedia.
So if and when war comes; you should not think of this hypothetical independent India doing the same as what the Republic of India did after 1947. Its foreign policy will still be tied to Britain and there would still be a major war effort. What you might not see would be a Bengal Famine.
On the issue of British troops being “tied down in India”, it should be pointed out that troops in India were (from 1942 especially) either involved in the Bruma campaign or had been used in Persia or Iraq. The British Army tended to rotate regiments and higher in and out of theaters. Many units in India were there for rest and refit and would be sent to other theaters when ready.