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War Crimes Trials in the Wake of Decolonization and Cold War in Asia, 1945-1956 pp 69–91Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Decolonization and Subaltern Sovereignty: India and the Tokyo Trial

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Part of the book series: World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence ((WHCCV))

Abstract

This chapter relates Indian involvement with the Tokyo Trial to the complex intellectual and political attitudestowards concepts and regimes of sovereignty demonstrated by select Indian political actors. I draw on the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel as well as on Subaltern Studies and postcolonial scholarship to conceptualize the paradigm of ‘subaltern sovereignty’. I argue that the Indian judge in the trial, Radhabinod Pal, as well as various Indian actors associated with the Government of India and with the trial, demonstrated ambiguities towards ideas of state and supra-state sovereignty. On the one hand, from a location of racial and colonial subalternity, they critiqued regimes of sovereignty for being complicit with various instantiations of imperialism and violence; on the other hand, they felt that extra-European societies needed to adopt modern-Western structures of sovereignty if they wished to gain political autonomy within the modern international system. Such complexities account for Pal’s simultaneous denunciation of sovereignty and apologia for Japanese sovereignty (and, arguably, sovereign violence) as well as for the attitudes of Indian actors – including of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru – as they vacillated between denouncing Japan and trying to protect the Japanese leadership. The chapter further locates Indian association with the Tokyo Trial within broader transnational settings (and globally-oriented intellection), including in terms of the relation between India and the British Government, as well as in relation to the politics of decolonization and neo-colonialism across East and South-East Asia. The essay’s main contribution thus lies in using the Indian participation in Tokyo to challenge certain dominant narratives about decolonization which conceptualize the latter in terms of a translation of sovereignty from empire to postcolony. Instead, the chapter argues that decolonization opened up ineradicably contradictory ways of conceptualizing sovereignty, and it is within these fecund contradictions and radical intellectual apertures that the politics and intellectual innovativeness of the Tokyo Trial needs to be situated.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The quoted phrase is taken from Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 16–8. On the construction of colonial difference, see also Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

  2. 2.

    Milinda Banerjee, ‘Does International Criminal Justice Require a Sovereign? Historicising Radhabinod Pal’s Tokyo Judgment in Light of his ‘Indian’ Legal Philosophy,’ in Historical Origins of International Criminal Law, vol. 2, Morten Bergsmo, Cheah Wui Ling, and Yi Ping, eds. (Brussels: Torkel Opsahl, 2014), 67–117. The present chapter draws in part on that earlier article, while adding new empirical and theoretical strands.

  3. 3.

    David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

  4. 4.

    Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006).

  5. 5.

    Samuel Moyn, ‘On the Nonglobalization of Ideas,’ in Global Intellectual History, Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori, eds. (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2013), 187–204.

  6. 6.

    Samuel Moyn, ‘Judith Shklar versus the International Criminal Court,’ Humanity 4 (2013), 485.

  7. 7.

    The expression ‘subaltern sovereignty’ has also been used in M. Madhava Prasad, “Fan Bhakti and Subaltern Sovereignty: Enthusiasm as a Political Factor”, Economic and Political Weekly 44 (2009): 68–76; however my focus and argument about subaltern sovereignty is quite different from Prasad’s. In case of India, and especially for Bengal (from where Pal came), the experience of decolonization was also marked by the violence and displacements unleashed by Partition. Many (on both ‘right’ and ‘left’ strands of the political spectrum) also lamented the inadequacy of a transfer of power that left intact much of the framework of British governance. On the ensuing complexities, including in terms of emotional expression, see Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Decolonization in South Asia: Meanings of Freedom in Post-Independence West Bengal, 1947–52 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009).

  8. 8.

    Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995); Georg W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, A. V. Miller, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 119–138.

  9. 9.

    Yuki Takatori, ‘“America’s” War Crimes Trial? Commonwealth Leadership at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, 1946–48,’ The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 35 (2007): 557; James Burnham Sedgwick, ‘The Trial Within: Negotiating Justice at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, 1946–1948,’ University of British Columbia PhD Dissertation, 2012, 269.

  10. 10.

    Milinda Banerjee, ‘India’s “Subaltern Elites” and the Tokyo Trial’ (forthcoming), draft paper presented at the conference ‘Law, Biography, and a Trial: The Tokyo Tribunal’s Transnational Histories,’ Heidelberg University, 6–8 December 2015.

  11. 11.

    ‘Statement on the Establishment of a Far Eastern Commission to Formulate Policies for the Carrying Out of the Japanese Surrender Terms,’ issued in London by James F. Byrnes, US secretary of state on 29 September 1945, and released to the press on 1 October 1945, in United States The Department of State Bulletin, 1945, vol. 13, 545; ‘Appointment of Indian Representative,’ 29 October 1945, in United States The Department of State Bulletin, 1945, vol. 13, 728.

  12. 12.

    National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD (hereafter NARA), General Records of the Department of State, RG 59, Letter from the Acting Secretary of State to the Agent General for India, 23 January 1946, File No. 740.00116 PW/1-446 CS/LE, Box 3631, Decimal File, 1945–49.

  13. 13.

    NARA, General Records of the Department of State, RG 59, Letter from the Agent General for India to the Secretary of State, 4 January 1946, File No. 740.00116 PW/1–446 CS/LE, Box 3631, Decimal File, 1945–49.

  14. 14.

    Sedgwick, ‘The Trial Within,’ 265–9, 305.

  15. 15.

    Banerjee, ‘India’s “Subaltern Elites”.’

  16. 16.

    International Military Tribunal for the Far East Charter, available at http://www.jus.uio.no/english/services/library/treaties/04/4-06/military-tribunal-far-east.xml (accessed on 13 October 2014); NARA, General Records of the Department of State, RG 59, Telegram Sent, Department of State, 22 April 1946, File No. 740.00116 PW/4-2246 CS/A, Box 3631, Decimal File, 1945–49.

  17. 17.

    NARA, General Records of the Department of State, RG 59, Letter from the Agent General for India to the Secretary of State, 29 April 1946, File No. 740.00116PW/4-2946 CS/A, Box 3631, Decimal File, 1945–49.

  18. 18.

    International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) Transcripts, United States of America et al. v. Araki Sadao et al., Judgment of The Hon’ble Mr. Justice Pal, Member from India (‘Pal Judgment’) (https://www.legal-tools.org/en/go-to-database/ltfolder/0_29521/#results), 1226. All citations from the Tokyo Trial have been given from the International Criminal Court Legal Tools Database.

  19. 19.

    Judith N. Shklar, Legalism: An Essay on Law, Morals and Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 181–90; Richard H. Minear, Victors’ Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971); Elizabeth S. Kopelman, ‘Ideology and International Law: The Dissent of the Indian Justice at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial,’ New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 23 (1990/91): 373–444; Neil Boister and Robert Cryer, The Tokyo International Military Tribunal: A Reappraisal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Robert Cryer, ‘The Doctrinal Foundations of International Criminalization,’ in International Criminal Law, vol. 1, Mahmoud C. Bassiouni, ed. (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2008), 112; Robert Cryer, ‘The Philosophy of International Criminal Law,’ in Research Handbook on the Theory and History of International Law, Alexander Orakhelashvili, ed. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011), 243; Kirsten Sellars, ‘Imperfect Justice at Nuremberg and Tokyo,’ The European Journal of International Law 21 (2011): 1096; Kirsten Sellars, ‘Crimes against Peace’ and International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Latha Varadarajan, ‘The Trials of Imperialism: Radhabinod Pal’s Dissent at the Tokyo Tribunal,’ European Journal of International Relations 2014: 1–23.

  20. 20.

    Yuma Totani, The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), especially 218–45. This is presumably also the opinion of Nariaki Nakazato, Paru Hanji: Indo nashonarizumu to Tokyo Saiban (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2011), which, like other Japanese literature on Pal, I have not studied. On Nakazato’s views: Yuma Totani, ‘Japanese Receptions of Separate Opinions at the Tokyo Trial,’ 2015, http://ceas.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/events/2014-2015/Totani%20Paper%20for%20CEAS%20copy.pdf, 16–17, accessed 24 October 2015.

  21. 21.

    Homi K. Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,’ in his The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 85–92.

  22. 22.

    Ashis Nandy, ‘The Other Within: The Strange Case of Radhabinod Pal’s Judgment on Culpability,’ in New Literary History 23 (1992): 60.

  23. 23.

    Nakajima Takeshi, ‘Justice Pal (India)’ in Beyond Victor’s Justice?: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial Revisited, Yuki Tanaka, Tim McCormack and Gerry Simpson, eds. (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2011), 140.

  24. 24.

    Barry Hill, ‘Reason and Lovelessness: Tagore, War Crimes, and Justice Pal,’ in Postcolonial Studies 18 (2015): 156.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., 157.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., 159.

  27. 27.

    Banerjee, ‘International Criminal Justice,’ 72–86. The main sources for my interpretation are: Radhabinod Pal, The Hindu Philosophy of Law in the Vedic and Post-Vedic Times Prior to the Institutes of Manu (Calcutta: Biswabhandar Press, 1927?); Radhabinod Pal, The History of Hindu Law in the Vedic Age and in Post-Vedic Times down to the Institutes of Manu (Calcutta: Biswabhandar Press, 1929?), enlarged edition: (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1958).

  28. 28.

    Pal Judgment, 186.

  29. 29.

    Ibid., 10–5, 145.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., 186 (underlining in the original here and elsewhere in citations in this chapter).

  31. 31.

    Banerjee, ‘International Criminal Justice,’ 104–8; Sellars, Crimes.

  32. 32.

    IMTFE Transcript, United States of America et al. v. Araki Sadao et al., Judgment (https://www.legal-tools.org/en/go-to-database/ltfolder/0_29521/#results), 1 November 1948, especially 23–37.

  33. 33.

    Pal Judgment, 24–25.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., 147–51.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., 151.

  36. 36.

    Ibid., 342.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., 29, 55, 57, 60–1.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., 55.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 238–9.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., 70.

  41. 41.

    Ibid., 736.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., 1070, 1089.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., 9, 137–8, 1089–91; Banerjee, ‘International Criminal Justice,’ 99–100.

  44. 44.

    Sellars, Crimes, 234–35; Sedgwick, ‘The Trial Within,’ 83. Many of the archival documents cited from now on in this essay have been interrogated by previous scholars; however, I add new theoretical dimensions.

  45. 45.

    Quote from The National Archives, United Kingdom (hereafter TNA), FO 371/66552, From United Kingdom Liaison Mission in Japan to Foreign Office, 25 April 1947. The trial provoked juridical conflicts which were rooted in ideological and private quarrels, in turn resulting in attempts to negate differences. See, for example, TNA, LCO 2/2992, FO 371/63820, FO 371/66552, FO 371/66553.

  46. 46.

    TNA, FO 371/66553, U 666/1/73, Foreign Office, 22 May 1947.

  47. 47.

    Lisette Schouten, ‘From Tokyo to the United Nations: B. V. A. Röling, International Criminal Jurisdiction and the Debate on Establishing an International Criminal Court, 1949–1957,’ in Bergsmo et al. (eds.), Historical Origins, 184–92.

  48. 48.

    TNA, FO 371/66553, Foreign Office Note, 23 May 1947.

  49. 49.

    TNA, FO 371/63820, From United Kingdom Liaison Mission in Japan to Foreign Office, 21 September 1947.

  50. 50.

    TNA, DO 35/2938, Record of Conversation between the Secretary of State and the High Commissioner for India, 3 August 1948.

  51. 51.

    TNA, DO 35/2938, F. 3151/17, 5 August 1948 (quote from here); also TNA, DO 35/2938, F. 3151/17, Letter from Commonwealth Relations Office to F. S. Tomlinson, Foreign Office, and F 12157/48/G, Telegram from Foreign Office to UK Liaison Mission in Japan.

  52. 52.

    TNA, DO 35/2938, F 10950/48/G, Letter from F. S. Tomlinson, Foreign Office, to J. M. C. James, Commonwealth Relations Office, 20 August 1948.

  53. 53.

    TNA, DO 35/2938, Telegram from United Kingdom Liaison Mission in Japan to Foreign Office, 7 September 1948.

  54. 54.

    TNA, FO 371/69833, F 15996/48/23, Minutes, 15 November 1948.

  55. 55.

    TNA, DO 35/2938, Letter from Philip Noel-Baker to V. K. Krishna Menon, 2 October 1948.

  56. 56.

    TNA, DO 35/2938, P. A. 39/13/48, Letter from United Kingdom Liaison Mission in Japan to M. E. Dening, Foreign Office, 25 November 1948.

  57. 57.

    TNA, DO 35/2938, Notes of Commonwealth Relations Office.

  58. 58.

    Jawaharlal Nehru, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 8 (Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1989), 415.

  59. 59.

    Jawaharlal Nehru, Letters to Chief Ministers (1947–1964), vol. 1 (Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1985), 234–5.

  60. 60.

    TNA, FO 371/69833, Telegram from Tokyo to Foreign Office, 22 November 1948.

  61. 61.

    TNA, FO 371/69834, F 17460/48/23, Minutes.

  62. 62.

    Banerjee, ‘International Criminal Justice,’ 91–2; Robert J. McMahon, The Cold War on the Periphery: The United States, India, and Pakistan (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1994), 103–8.

  63. 63.

    Official Records of the UN General Assembly, Ninth Session, Supplement No. 9, Report of the International Law Commission Covering the Work of its Sixth Session, 3, 28 July 1954, and Summary Record of the 276th Meeting of the International Law Commission, Document No. A/CN.4/SR.276, in International Law Commission database, http://legal.un.org/ilc/index.html (accessed 8 March 2015); Radhabinod Pal, Crimes in International Relations (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1955), especially 44–52.

  64. 64.

    Report on the Fifth Session of the Asian–African Legal Consultative Committee (Rangoon, January 1962) by Mr. Radhabinod Pal, Observer for the Commission, 153–4, in International Legal Commission database (accessed 8 March 2015).

  65. 65.

    Pal, History, 1958; Radhabinod Pal, Lectures on Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Calcutta: Federation Hall Society, 1965); Radhabinod Pal, World Peace Through World Law (Tokyo: United World Federalists of Japan, 1967).

  66. 66.

    Banerjee, ‘International Criminal Justice,’ 116–7.

  67. 67.

    Pal, History, 1958, 172.

  68. 68.

    Hegel, Phenomenology, 111–9.

  69. 69.

    Pal Judgment, 736.

  70. 70.

    Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, Chapter 32, available at Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm (accessed 23 March 2015).

  71. 71.

    Pal, Crimes, viii.

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  1. Presidency University, Kolkata, India

    Milinda Banerjee

  2. Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Milinda Banerjee

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    Kerstin von Lingen

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Banerjee, M. (2016). Decolonization and Subaltern Sovereignty: India and the Tokyo Trial. In: von Lingen, K. (eds) War Crimes Trials in the Wake of Decolonization and Cold War in Asia, 1945-1956. World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42987-8_4

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