{"id":90901,"date":"2019-06-30T15:58:45","date_gmt":"2019-06-30T22:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=90901"},"modified":"2019-06-30T15:58:45","modified_gmt":"2019-06-30T22:58:45","slug":"atlantic-charter-was-not-meant-to-give-freedom-to-asians-and-africans-in-european-colonies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/06\/30\/atlantic-charter-was-not-meant-to-give-freedom-to-asians-and-africans-in-european-colonies\/","title":{"rendered":"Atlantic Charter was not meant to give freedom to Asians and Africans in European colonies."},"content":{"rendered":"

Janaka Perera<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n

It\nis erroneous belief that Sri Lanka and most other\nEuropean colonies were granted Independence by the Atlantic Charter the US and\nthe UK agreed upon in 1941.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nwas no formal document called Atlantic Charter with signatures of Heads of\nStates as a Treaty. It was only a discussion paper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ntwo who discussed it Roosevelt and Churchill never meant to give freedom to\npeople in European colonies suffering for centuries under the jackboot of\nEuropean rule. The so called Atlantic Charter cannot be located anywhere with\nsignatures. It meant different things to different people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winston Churchill rejected the universal applicability of the\nAtlantic Charter when it came to the self-determination of subject nations such\nas British India. The Americans however were insistent that the charter was\nto acknowledge that the war was being fought to ensure self-determination.The\nBritish were forced to agree to these aims but in a September 1941\nspeech, Churchill stated that the Charter\nwas only meant to apply to states under German occupation, and certainly not to\nthe countries who formed part of the British Empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mahathma Gandhi in 1942 wrote to President\nRoosevelt: “I venture to think that the Allied declaration that the Allies\nare fighting to make the world safe for the freedom of the individual and for\ndemocracy sounds hollow so long as India and for that matter Africa are\nexploited by Great Britain…” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While\nself-determination was Roosevelt’s guiding principle, he was reluctant to place\npressure on the British in regard to India and other colonial possessions as\nthey were fighting for their lives in a war in which the United States was not\nofficially a participant.]<\/a><\/sup> Gandhi\nrefused to help either the British or the American war effort against Germany\nand Japan in any way, and Roosevelt chose to back Churchill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India was\nalready contributing significantly to the war effort, sending over 2.5 million\nmen (the largest volunteer force in the world at the time) to fight for the\nAllies, mostly in West Asia and North Africa. (See: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Atlantic_Charter<\/a><\/strong>  )<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No body has ever said that\nfreedom was being granted to India and Sri Lanka on the basis of an Atlantic\nCharter, that does not really exist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People in Asia fought the white\nman and got their freedom. It was never given free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examples abound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India, Indonesia, Myanmar\nVietnam illustrate this concept strikingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See also<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7         Crawford,\nNeta C. (2002). Argument\nand Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian\nIntervention<\/a>. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University\nPress. ISBN<\/a> 9780521002790<\/a>.<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janaka Perera It is erroneous belief that Sri Lanka and most other European colonies were granted Independence by the Atlantic Charter the US and the UK agreed upon in 1941. There was no formal document called Atlantic Charter with signatures of Heads of States as a Treaty. It was only a discussion paper.  The two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-janaka-perera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}