| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
After the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized that India possessed impressive military and industrial capacities, but he concluded that its anticolonial struggle for independence from the British Empire placed those capacities in doubt.1 At the same time, the administration observed an increasing connection between diplomatic goals and information activities.2 Although appreciating the importance of propaganda in international affairs, the administration failed to articulate the role and purpose of American information activities. The failure stemmed in large part from the Roosevelt administration's ambivalence about its policies concerning the British Empire and Indian nationalism. The Office of War Information (OWI), the organization responsible for U.S. propaganda abroad, received precious little direction from Washington concerning strategy or operations in India. Initially left on its own in India, the OWI attempted to generate goodwill by presenting the United States as the world's defender of democracy. Instead, American propaganda fostered suspicion among the British and Indians about U.S. motives. The OWI even confounded American diplomats, such as William Phillips, the second personal representative appointed by President Roosevelt in India, who warned that, "The Indians too may well be wondering whether we Americans are really going to displace the British by turning the attention of Indians to American methods, production and ideals.
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