Mustafa Nazir Ahmed: In which US state were you born and from where did you get your education?
Phillips Talbot: I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1914. I grew up mainly in the Middle Western state of Wisconsin. I went to public schools in Wauwatosa, a suburb of that state’s largest city, Wisconsin. My father, a civil engineer, was a corporate executive who became the director of research of his manufacturing company. Our family lived comfortably till my last year of high school, when in the depth of the 1930s Great Depression my father’s job was eliminated when his company nearly collapsed. Getting to college in 1932 would have been an impossible dream but for an invitation by my grandfather, a professor of engineering at the University of Illinois, to live with him and enrol in that institution for graduation. My grandfather’s ideas and work ethics made a big impression on me.
MNA: Which subjects did you study at college?
PT: I studied political science and journalism, rather than my family’s traditional subject, engineering.
MNA: Why did you choose to study journalism?
PT: I got interested in journalism because of the freedom of expression it allowed, though I became the ‘black sheep’ of a family of engineers.
MNA: Did you get a job after your graduation?
PT: Getting a job in 1936 was not easy, as the country was experiencing the bottom of Great Depression. However, I was lucky enough to be employed as a local reporter by the Chicago Daily News, then that city’s leading afternoon paper.
MNA: How did you become a foreign correspondent then?
PT: After I started my career in journalism, my interest in the world beyond America’s shores grew, in part as I realised how much of the glamour in journalism rested in its foreign correspondents in London, Rome, Berlin or elsewhere. When I tried for such an assignment, my editors told me, accurately, that “I was too young and too green” to be considered. The lucky break came when Walter S Rogers, director of the New York-based Institute of Current World Affairs, visited my newspaper and described the Institute’s desire to stake someone to India studies as part of its overall commitment to increase the pool of American knowledge of what we know call non-Western peoples.
MNA: Considering that you only 23 at that time, why were you chosen for that assignment?
PT: The Institute of Current World Affairs judged that, in view of the immense variety of Indian life, the fellow to be chosen for that assignment might well be a young journalist –in others words, a generalist accustomed to study and write on different dimensions of a broad topic. Another reason was that an expert was not required, as the purpose was only to present a picture of the Indian society at that time.
MNA: Were you interested in India too?
PT: Frankly, no. I grew interested not because the subject was India, about which I was ignorant and had no prior information, but because I believed this exposure in one country might set me on the road to becoming a foreign correspondent.
MNA: What was the perception of the US and the ordinary Americans about the Indian subcontinent at that time?
PT: The Americans, barring a few scholars and academics, knew nothing about the Indian subcontinent or its inhabitants till then. In fact, the British resisted the involvement of Americans, especially in the field of business, in their most valued colony, which was coloured red on the map as part of the British Empire. Another reason for this lack of knowledge was that no American had written an account of the Indian subcontinent till then and there was no major group of Indians living in the US at that time. The only Americans who had some exposure to the Indian subcontinent were Christian missionaries or, in exceptional cases, businesspeople. In comparison, China was much more accessible to the US and Americans at that time. The US media also covered only a few important political leaders like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, plus a few maharajas. The Institute of Current World Affairs was actually formed after no expert on India could be made available to then US president Woodrow Wilson to advise him during World War I. The overall ignorance of the Americans about the Indian subcontinent was also one of the main reasons for sending me to this part of the world.
MNA: So you were sent to India straight away?
PT: No, the Institute of Current World Affairs wisely decided that I needed some scholarly discipline on India before being plunged into that land. With American offerings available, I was shoe-horned into the one-year academic programme offered for Indian Civil Service (ICS) probationers at the London School of Oriental and African Studies.
MNA: How was that experience?
PT: In that year (1938-39), about half the probationers were British (all expecting full careers in India) and half Indian. During our year together, our small group had contacts with a wide variety of British and Indian officials, politicians, journalists and other people. A dividend of that year in London was that I had classmates whose assignments in the following years placed them in many of the Indian provinces that I visited.
MNA: What were your first impressions of the Indian subcontinent?
PT: I spent most of my time in the Indian subcontinent before the British left. When I first arrived in India, the Raj was very much firm and on top of things, especially after the 1935 Government of India Act. Most of the British ICS officers expected to spend their whole life here, as it was not in their remotest thinking that they would have to leave one day. As far as I am concerned, my main concern was to learn about India. I discussed this with a number of people and they suggested that I take one slice at a time. So, my first two years in India (1939-1941) were broadly divided between Muslim and Hindu settings. The Muslim experience included a term at the Aligarh Muslim University, which was India’s leading centre of Islamic academics and politics; followed by a community study in a rather isolated village in Kashmir. I also attended some major political meetings, including the All India Muslim League’s Lahore session where it formally adopted the goal of a separate country for Muslims. During my second year, I concentrated on Hindu settings, with stints at a Vedic Ashram in Lahore, Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan centre, the Konaikanal Ashram in south India and Gandhi’s ashram, Sevagra. I also did a couple of urban community studies in Lahore and Bombay (now Mumbai).
MNA: Did you anticipate that the British would leave India one day?
PT: No one anticipated that, as the politics functioned under the conditions set by the British. However, after the World War II, British bankruptcy became clear – India became a creditor to the Great Britain rather than a debtor. The British estimated that they needed 60,000 soldiers to subjugate India, but they did not have the enough human resources at that time. It was then British prime minister Clement Attlee, who came to power after pro-imperialism Sir Winston Churchill, on whom the reality dawned and who brought about a fundamental shift in the prevalent British thinking. Had it not been for Attlee, the decolonisation of the Indian subcontinent might have been a generation or two away. One must remember that the independence of India and Pakistan were one of the most crucial developments of the twentieth century. Though the centuries-old imperialist system was destined to end anyway, it was the independence of India and Pakistan that kick-started the process of decolonisation. The French, Spanish, Portuguese and the Belgians only followed suit the British as far as granting independence to their respective colonies is concerned. In short, this was the period of transition from imperialism to nationalism.
MNA: But why did the British leave the Indian subcontinent much earlier than they had announced?
PT: By the time Lord Mountbatten became the governor general of India, the law and order situation was already deteriorating. The forces of the British and the nationalists came at loggerheads. On the other hand, communal problems were on the rise. The situation became so worse that Hindu police could not control mobs of their community and the same was true for Muslims. This forced the British to leave earlier than announced.
MNA: How were the relations between Hindus and Muslims in the pre-partition days?
PT: In most of the places, they lived in complete harmony. However, there were occasional riots even in otherwise peaceful cities like Lahore.
MNA: Do you think that the creation of Pakistan was the right decision?
PT: No one foresaw that the partition would be so violent. To the contrary, Muhammad Ali Jinnah believed that the partition would reduce tensions between Muslims and Hindus. In fact, a number of proposals were floated in this regard. A prominent leader of All India Muslim League shared with me as many as eight different geographic plans for the new country. Similarly, another idea was to divide the Indian subcontinent along ethnic lines and have as many separate countries. The people of south India also wanted a separate country for them and even chose Dravidistan as its name. The people and leaders of Kerala also wanted it to be a separate country, as did the Nizam of Hyderabad.
MNA: Did you anticipate the separation of East Pakistan?
PT: Yes. Many important Indian leaders, including Muslims, believed that the idea of Pakistan was not feasible. They even argued that room should be left for Pakistan to rejoin India whenever it feels like doing so. However, the general impression was that the eastern wing of Pakistan will rejoin India in a matter of a few years, while the western wing might take longer.
MNA: Whom would you go for if given a choice – Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Patel or Bose?
PT: Gandhi was the conscience of the Indian National Congress, very different from other political leaders of the time. Nehru, on the other hand, was an idealist. He gave India the gift of 17 years of solid leadership, established institutions and built a foundation for his country. Jinnah could have done similar for Pakistan had he lived on longer. Coming to Patel, many people believed that he was the better choice as India’s prime minister than Nehru – he was the one who brought many princely states into India’s dominion. However, he was tough against Muslims as well as Pakistan. Bose, on the other hand, was a maverick, a real intellectual.
MNA: Do you believe in the theory of clash of civilisations?
PT: No, as it misses the point of conflicts we have observed. Religion is used as a point of identification by a political group only at times. Basically, all the conflicts are political in nature and they have nothing to do with either religion or culture.
MNA: Does this mean that the US should bring about a change in its ongoing policy?
PT: Why not? We have entered a new phase of world history. As a result of globalisation, new economic powers like China and India are restructuring global patterns. Therefore, even a great power like the US should adjust its policies to take into account the interests of the nations that are on the rise. There is no room for unilateralism, either by the US or any other country, in this era of globalisation.
MNA: Has Lahore changed since you last visited the city?
PT: A lot. The new construction is obvious. I was astonished to see the new airport, which is not only very modern but also very attractive. Also, the city seems to have expanded a lot. During this visit, I found myself more in unfamiliar places than the familiar ones.
By: Mustafa Nazir Ahmad
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