“The Great Flap of 1942: How the Raj Panicked over a Japanese Non-invasion” by Mukund Padmanabhan

Mukund Padmanabhan

Wars produce confusion and panic that often result from fears—rational and otherwise—among government officials and populations subject to war’s vicissitudes. During World War II, British officials in India and their colonial subjects feared a Japanese invasion of the sub-continent that never occurred. Krea University philosophy professor and former editor of The Hindu Mukund Padmanabhan tells this fascinating story in his debut book The Great Flap of 1942.

The book is centered in the port city of Madras in the southeast portion of the peninsula near the Bay of Bengal. That is where the author’s mother lived during the war. She and her family and most of the residents fled the city in 1942 after Raj officials advised evacuation due to “fear[s] of Japanese air raids and invasion”. Those fears were not wholly unwarranted. Japanese forces had attacked the Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand, Burma, and, most threateningly, Malaya. Japanese warplanes had bombed Colombo and Trincomalee on Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Vizagapatam and Cocanada on the Indian coast. Japanese warships had sunk vessels in the Bay of Bengal. Japanese planes were sighted near the Madras coast. Rumors spread that an invasion of India was imminent.

 

The Great Flap of 1942: How the Raj Panicked over a Japanese Non-invasion", Mukund Padmanabhan (Vintage India, February 2024)
The Great Flap of 1942: How the Raj Panicked over a Japanese Non-invasion, Mukund Padmanabhan (Vintage India, February 2024)

Padmanabhan explains that what began as a story about the exodus from Madras grew into the larger tale of multiple evacuations from Indian cities in the context of Indian and British politics, sectarian divisions, and wartime necessities. World War II coincided with a growing and more insistent independence movement among an elite class of Indians coupled with a less confident British ruling class in the Raj. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill opposed Indian independence but the war against Hitler took precedence over everything else. Indian political elites were divided over strategies to achieve independence, with Gandhi promoting non-violent resistance, Subhash Chandra Bose siding with Axis powers, and Nehru and Jinnah taking a more moderate approach.

Padmanabhan writes that the Japanese invasions of Burma and Malaya, the subsequent fall of Singapore, and the sinking of the British battleship Prince of Wales and the cruiser Repulse damaged British prestige in the region. “The attack and fall of Malaya”, the author explains, “set many things in motion in India.”

 

The tongue of rumour wagged wildly as people fled cities, spreading stories of fantastic Japanese prowess and contemptible British cowardice.

 

Japan and Germany used propaganda to further damage British prestige in India, often using actual and presumed British racist attitudes and actions as weapons. Meanwhile, the Raj countered with its own propaganda, including radio broadcasts by George Orwell, which emphasized the brutality of the Japanese towards other Asian peoples in places they conquered and occupied.

The author notes that British authorities tried to persuade Indian elites to support Britain’s war effort by sending Sir Stafford Cripps, the Lord Privy Seal, to negotiate quasi-independent status for India. The mission was a failure. Nothing short of independence would have won over key Indian leaders.

 

The Great Flap lasted into 1943. In Madras and other coastal cities, Raj officials had ordered the digging of trenches, the imposition of lighting restrictions, the installation of air raid sirens and other defensive measures even before mass evacuations began. British and later American troops arrived in India in large numbers, causing an increase in prostitution and accusations of sexual molestation among the Indian population. And the fears, wartime restrictions, and evacuations were not limited to coastal areas. They spread to the interior, including Delhi, and cities on the western coast such as Bombay.

Consequences of the Great Flap included “abandoned homes, separated families, lost livelihoods,” Padmanabhan writes. In Madras alone, an estimated 75 percent of the population fled. Mass exoduses in some cities caused food shortages and business closings, which in turn caused more people to flee those cities. Even zoo animals were not spared. Padmanabhan’s epilogue describes how officials carried out the killing of zoo animals due to fears that animals set loose by bombings would pose a danger to the people.

Padmanabhan’s verdict on the Great Flap is harsh. “That an entire city could have fled because of an invasion that never happened,” he writes, “is a story with an irresistible twist of dystopian futility.”  He calls the Great Flap “a story about how something that never happened triggered a number of events that never should have.” Alas, that could be said about events in most wars. What seems urgent during the fog of war, can be viewed as futile and unnecessary with the benefit of hindsight.


Francis P Sempa is the author of Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century and America’s Global Role: Essays and Reviews on National Security, Geopolitics and War. His writings appear in The Diplomat, Joint Force Quarterly, the University Bookman and other publications. He is an attorney and an adjunct professor of political science at Wilkes University.