WINSTON CHURCHILL was prepared to let Mahatma Gandhi die on hunger strike while in British custody, writes Peter Day.

Churchill opposed granting concessions to the leader of the Indian independence movement and believed he should be treated like any other prisoner if he stopped eating.

The former Tory prime minister’s combative views are revealed in declassified records from meetings of the war cabinet and contrast sharply with the opinions held by David Cameron, the current leader of the Conservative party.

Cameron yesterday quoted Gandhi in his new year message to party activists. “I want to usher in a new type of politics in this country: constructive, thoughtful and open-minded,” he said. “As Gandhi said, ‘We must be the change we want to see in the world’.”

The wartime cabinet documents, recorded in shorthand by Sir Norman Brook, the deputy cabinet secretary, show ministers argued fiercely about the consequences of allowing Gandhi to die while interned during the second world war.

On the one hand, they feared a mass uprising in India and international embarrassment. But they were equally loathe to grant him freedom to campaign against the war and the British regime while India was under threat of invasion from Japan.

The Indian leader was detained in the Aga Khan’s palace in August 1942 after condemning India’s involvement in the fight against Nazi Germany and calling for civil disobedience against British rule.

Some British officials initially took a hardline stance on the prospect of a hunger strike, with Lord Linlithgow, the colony’s viceroy, sending ministers a telegram stating he was “strongly in favour of letting (Gandhi) starve to death”.

However, senior figures in London feared the repercussions would be too great. Lord Halifax, the ambassador to Washington and former foreign secretary, told the cabinet: “Whatever the disadvantages of letting him out, his death in detention would be worse.”

Ministers eventually decided in January 1943 — after Gandhi had warned that he intended to begin a fast — that they would be willing to release him on compassionate grounds if he was likely to die.

Sir Stafford Cripps, minister for aircraft production, said: “He is such a semi-religious figure that his death in our hands would be a great blow and embarrassment to us.”

Churchill, however, was clearly incensed by the prospect of handing Gandhi a moral victory. “I wd keep him there and let him do as he likes,” says the document.

“But if you are going to let him out because he strikes, then let him out now,” it continues.

Churchill insisted that any move should be portrayed as a victory for the authorities.

“Cab(inet) feel v strongly on principle of release because of strike. Wd prefer to release as act of grace because det(ained) 6 (months) and we’ve beaten him.”

Gandhi was finally freed in 1944, because of fears about his generally failing health. India was granted independence three years later.

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