Analyze similarities and differences in how India gained its independence and how one of the following gained its independence during the 20th century. Algeria Vietnam Angola

In both India and Vietnam, a central figure rose to prominence as the leader for the cause of independence.³ That leader in India was Mohandas Gandhi, and in Vietnam it was Ho Chi Minh. These men were not at all alike. Whereas Gandhi practiced satyagraha and non-violent forms of protest, such as leading the Salt March and a boycott of British textiles, Ho for more than 20 years as the leader of communist North Vietnam led the fight against the French and later against the United States in a protracted “proxy war” in the larger Cold War battle between the U.S. and USSR.⁴ Despite Gandhi’s nonviolent lead, however, independence for India was marked by considerable bloodshed. This was not due to clashes with the British but instead was caused by the violence between Hindus and Muslims that erupted in 1947 as South Asia was partitioned into two states – Hindu-dominated India and Muslim-dominated Pakistan. Gandhi predicted this bloodshed and was an outspoken critic of the idea of partition, championed most vocally by Muhammad Ali Jinnah of the Muslim League.⁵

Although the initial drive for independence came much earlier, the power of Asian nationalism became unstoppable in India, Vietnam and elsewhere in the wake of World War II. Although British Prime Minister Winston Churchill vowed to maintain the British empire whatever the cost, the economic devastation of the war made it unrealistic for Britain to bear the financial burden of empire in India, which explains why the British voted Churchill out of office just two months after V-E Day, despite his heroic wartime leadership beating back the Nazi threat.⁶ In a similar fashion,⁷ World War II brought Vietnam’s independence movement to a head as Ho helped oust Japan from the country in the closing days of the war and then immediately issued the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence.

The events of World War II, in fact, explain the major difference in India’s independence when compared to Vietnam’s: The former was negotiated peacefully, while the latter was achieved only after a lengthy war. When Britain’s Labour Party displaced Churchill in 1945, its mandate was in part a repudiation of empire, and so the negotiated independence for the so-called “jewel in the crown” was little more than a formality. Britain had weathered the Blitz and helped liberate western Europe from the ravages of Hitler’s regime. In sharp contrast, the French at the conclusion of World War II were reeling from the humiliation of being so easily defeated and occupied by the Germans. And that no doubt explains why they set out to recapture their world-power status by reasserting through force their imperial ambitions in Southeast Asia, not to mention north Africa.⁸ They recaptured Saigon and much of southern Vietnam in 1945 before moving on to the north in a brutal bombing campaign to retake Hanoi. But through the late 1940s and early 1950s, Ho and his communist forces – aided by communist China after 1949 – successfully used guerrilla warfare in the countryside to force the French to sue for peace. Vietnam’s struggle for independence then morphed into the Vietnam War between the communist-backed north and the U.S.-backed south, a Cold War struggle that eventually ended with Vietnam’s reunification as an entirely communist state by 1976. That Vietnam’s independence became a proxy war between the U.S. and USSR highlights another difference with India, which pursued a neutral policy of nonalignment with either superpower during the Cold War.⁹