She had identified women and welfare issues as an area she would support. One of her priorities was to win the trust of influential female figures such as: Gandhi’s secretary, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, who would become the first woman to hold Cabinet rank as Minister of Health after the transfer of power; Patel’s daughter, Maniben; Jinnah’s sister, Fatima; and Nehru’s sister, Mrs Vijaya Lakshmi Patel. Pamela meanwhile worked two evenings a week in the Allied Forces Canteen, but also accompanied her mother to visit schools and hospitals.
Many Indians remained suspicious of the new Viceroy. ‘Mountbatten said that he was forced to accept the Viceroyalty of India by His Majesty the King. There can be no bigger untruth,’ wrote Shahid Haid, Sir Claude Auchinleck’s private secretary, in his diary on the day of the swearing-in:
It is common knowledge that he wanted it badly to enhance his political standing and he worked towards it. He established close contact with Nehru knowing that he would one day become the Prime Minister of India. It was the efforts of Krishna Menon which further cemented their friendship . . . According to common gossip, Mountbatten has come to partition India as quickly as possible, irrespective of the consequences – sort out the Princes; take all possible measures to keep the two countries in the Commonwealth; ensure that Britain’s strategic and mercantile interests in South Asia are not jeopardised and, finally, keep the Indian leaders under pressure and give them no time to think.410
Each morning Mountbatten’s key advisers – Pug Ismay, Eric Miéville, George Abell for the Punjab, Ian Scott speaking for the future Pakistan, John Christie for Bengal and Vernon Erskine-Crum – would meet to review the previous 24 hours and Mountbatten would use them as a sounding board for his various tactics. They were later joined by V.P. Menon, the Reforms Commissioner, who would give an insight into ‘Indian thinking’.
One of Mountbatten’s priorities was to get to know and win the trust of the key players – Nehru and Gandhi representing the Hindu community, Sardar Patel of the Congress Party, and Jinnah and Liaqat Ali Khan for the Muslims. Each was invited for a one-to-one chat in his study, generally of an hour followed by 15 minutes with a stenographer to take down the salient details.411
Mountbatten’s first visitor was Nehru and, helped by the Singapore meeting the year before, relations were good from the start. Indeed, it was not only Dickie, but also Edwina who instantly warmed to the lonely and charismatic widower. Hamid noted in his diary within ten days of the Mountbattens’ arrival that ‘according to Menon, Nehru’s relationship with Lady Mountbatten is sufficiently close to have raised many eyebrows.’412
The two certainly spent much time together during the first week and there is evidence of an immediate intimacy. Photographs of the time show her looking lovingly at him at a Red Cross meeting. At the Mountbattens’ first garden party, Nehru sat cross-legged at Edwina’s feet during a dance recital with too few chairs for guests, and after the party she returned to his house, unaccompanied by her husband but with her daughter, for a nightcap.413
The senior Congress politician, Maulana Azad, felt that whilst Nehru was ‘greatly impressed by Lord Mountbatten . . . perhaps an even greater was the influence of Lady Mountbatten. She is not only extremely intelligent, but had a most attractive and friendly temperament. She admired her husband greatly and in many cases tried to interpret his thought to those who would not at first agree with him.’414
Nehru also made an immediate impression, not least on Pamela:
not only by his beautiful speaking voice and impeccable dress, a white buttoned-down tunic with the famous Nehru collar, jodhpurs and a rosebud in his buttonhole, but also by his warmth and charm, which enveloped me from our first handshake. Watching him interact with others, I could see that he reacted to things instantly, was quick to laugh or make you laugh, and always interested in what you had to say. I realised that both Gandhi and Nehru were the most extraordinary people I had ever met.415
On 31 March, it was Gandhi’s turn. Though he held little political power, he was an important influencer. His calculated gesture of putting his hand on Edwina’s shoulder to steady himself sent out signals to India and the world that this was a couple with whom he could do business.
The Mountbattens, however, found it difficult to establish any sort of personal rapport with the austere and intransigent Jinnah, who they did not meet until 5 April and then made a point of seeing every day until 10 April. Dickie, never sure whether Jinnah’s demand for five Muslim provinces was a negotiating play or non-negotiable, was to call him at various times ‘a bastard, a dolt, a clot, a psychopathic and hopeless case, a one-man band, an evil genius, a fool, a cold and repressed person’.416 Edwina encountered the same problem when she had tea with Jinnah’s sister in late April:
She seemed almost fanatical at times in her attitude . . . Like Mr Jinnah, she has, of course a persecution mania, and is obviously convinced that the Hindu intends to subjugate and dominate the Muslim completely.417
It quickly became clear that Jinnah would not accept the Cabinet Mission Plan and that transferring power in June 1948 would be too late. ‘The situation is everywhere electric, and I get the feeling that the mine may go up at any moment,’ wrote Ismay to his wife Darry within days of his arrival. ‘It is not reason or logic that is at the back of it all, but sheer emotionalism, and emotionalism is the hardest thing to contend with. There is very little anti-British feeling, but the inter-communal hatred is a devouring flame.’418 In the Punjab, Governor’s rule had been imposed by Sir Evan Jenkins after Hindus and Sikhs had refused to cooperate with the Muslim League. There was also violence in North-West Frontier Province, where direct rule was also being considered by the governor, Sir Olaf Caroe.
Ismay was later to write in his memoirs:
I had thought before I left England that a period of fifteen months was far too short a time in which to complete arrangements for the transfer of power. But I had not been three weeks in India before I was convinced that so far from being too short, it was too long. The principal reason for this change of mind was the realisation that communal bitterness had grown to incredible proportions since I was last in India.419
He quickly realised that with independence and partition, the police could no longer be relied on to operate in a non-sectarian manner. Without a dispassionate police force, there was little hope of keeping order except through the British Army. Indian Political Intelligence was also now run by an Indian, who would not share it with the new Viceroy.
Ismay continued, ‘A second reason for my conviction that we could not continue to bear responsibility until June 1948 was that the administration of the country was going to the dogs.’420 There had been no recruitment to the Indian Civil Service since the beginning of the war and numbers had fallen from a peak of over 1,000 to under 500. The Coalition Government was divided on communal lines and refused to work together. The Muslim League was in charge of Finance and rejected every proposal put forward by the Congress members of the Executive Council. ‘The only point on which there was agreement,’ Ismay noted, ‘was that the British should quit India as soon as possible’:421
They were torn with suspicions of each other and of the British. They read sinister motives into the most innocent proposals. They worked themselves into ungovernable rages with anyone who disagreed with them. They did not hesitate to wreck any plan that was not in entire accord with their own desires, but admitted no responsibility for finding any practical alternative.422
‘The scene here is one of unrelieved gloom,’ Mountbatten reported to Attlee on 1 April:
The country is in a most unsettled state. There are communal riots and troubles in the Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Bihar, Calcutta, Bombay, UP and even here in Delhi. In the Punjab all parties are seriously preparing for civil war, and of these by far the most business like are the Sikhs. I am convinced that a fairly quick decision would appear to be the only way to convert the Indian minds from their present emotionalism to stark realism and to counte
r the disastrous spread of strife.423
To the King the same day he concluded, ‘that unless I act quickly I may well find the real beginnings of a civil war on my hands.’424
CHAPTER 18
A Tryst with Destiny
Even before Mountbatten had arrived, Indian politicians had accepted that partition was inevitable, not least because of Jinnah’s insistence on a separate Muslim state and the paralysis in the Executive Council. Mountbatten’s challenge was to find a plan that all would accept. On 11 April, Ismay sent V.P. Menon ‘the bare bones of a possible plan for the transfer of power’ asking him to make comments, ‘put some flesh upon it’ and ‘work out a rough timetable’.425
‘Plan Balkan’ argued for the partition of Punjab, Bengal & Assam (a separate plebiscite in the North-West Frontier Province), with the provinces working out their own constitutions and with a Central Government dealing with defence, foreign affairs and communications. Mountbatten argued that it had to be the Indians themselves who would take the final decision on their future.
A few days later, the provincial governors met to discuss the plan. They agreed the transfer of power must be quick to avoid the country disintegrating and accepted, with regret, there was no alternative to partition. Sir Olaf Caroe, Governor of the North-West Frontier, and Sir Evan Jenkins, Governor of the Punjab, warned Mountbatten that once partition was announced it would be ‘followed by an immediate blow-up. There was therefore a military problem of considerable magnitude.’426
Against these threats, British administration was breaking down. Sir John Colville, Governor of Bombay, said he had only 22 ICS officers to manage a province of about 30 million people and estimated there were 12 private armies operating, which numbered more than 400,000, from the 7,000 in Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s Red Shirts to the 100,000 in the Hindu Mahasabha, the nationalist movement that proclaimed India should be for Hindus.
The North-West Frontier presented a particular problem, as 90 per cent of its population were Muslim, but it had elected a Congress government in 1945. Both factions therefore laid claim to it. At the end of April, Mountbatten decided he should visit it – one of only two provincial visits he would make during his Viceroyalty. The evening before, Government House had been invaded and a shot fired through a window. A crowd of Pathans, all supporters of the Muslim League, awaited his arrival. Caroe requested he should make an appearance to try and diffuse the situation. Edwina insisted on accompanying him.
From a railway embankment, hand-in-hand and silhouetted against the sky, the couple looked down on 70,000 people, any of whom, they were aware, could have killed them with a bomb or bullet.427 By chance, they were dressed simply in bush shirts, the green matching the Pakistan national colour. ‘I neither spoke nor waved to them but simply stood there,’ Mountbatten later reported.428 There was a moment’s silence and then cries of ‘Mountbatten Zindabad!’ (Long Live Mountbatten!) The shouting was too great for a speech, so for nearly an hour the Mountbattens simply stood waving to the crowd.429 The situation had been defused – but for how long?
Whilst Dickie and Pamela returned to Delhi, Edwina stayed on for four days, travelling 1,500 miles by air, jeep and on foot to see for herself the extent of the damage from the disturbances. In one town, Kahuta, a Moslem horde had overwhelmed the town, raping the women before killing them and burning the town down. For Dickie it was confirmation that independence needed to come quickly, for Edwina an indication of the challenges that might soon be faced in terms of humanitarian aid. She was immediately galvanised into action, writing to officials recommending various practical measures, including setting up health clinics in refugee camps. She had found a role for herself again, no longer simply as an appendage to her husband.
Dickie had no illusions about the problems that lay ahead, not least ‘a great deal of trouble on the Frontier’.430 He continued:
The more I look at the problems of India the more I realise that all this partition business is sheer madness and is going to reduce the economic efficiency of the whole country immeasurably. No one would ever induce me to agree to it were it not for this fantastic communal madness that has seized everybody and leaves no other course open.431
At the beginning of May, Ismay therefore presented the new plan in London. It allowed for each of the 11 provinces to decide their own future, Bengal and the Punjab to choose being split between India and Pakistan, to join one country entirely, or go it alone. Within a week, it had been approved by the Cabinet. The aim was to release the text 24 hours before Indian leaders next met on 17 May, thereby reducing the amount of time they could suggest amendments.
On 6 May, Dickie, Edwina, Pamela and Peter Murphy left to spend a few days relaxing in Simla – Edwina had suffered from bad neuralgia on the North-West Frontier and Dickie was ‘recovering from a bad go of Delhi belly’.432 Three days later, they were joined at the Viceregal weekend house, another 1,000 feet higher near the village of Mashobra, by Nehru, who entertained them by standing on his head and showing them how to walk backwards uphill.
Encouraged by the relaxed atmosphere and keen to have Nehru’s views on the plan, Dickie gave Nehru his proposed plan to read as he was going to bed. His response was immediate and negative, arguing that the plan would ‘Balkanise’ India, creating a series of independent states at loggerheads with each other. Mountbatten thought Nehru had accepted the plan; Nehru claimed he had never properly been shown it. ‘It is clear the whole of this sorry postponement has been due to over-trustfulness and impatience,’ wrote John Christie in his diary on 14 May.433 It had been a humiliation – Mountbatten had told the Cabinet the plan was acceptable to the Indian leaders – but at least he had averted a greater embarrassment. Soon Dickie, who could well have been finished, was congratulating himself that he had followed his hunch.
V.P. Menon now came up with a solution, one which saved face for both countries and Britain. Power would be handed over to two central governments, each with dominion status and a governor-general, and each with its own constituent assembly. If both countries were members of the Commonwealth, then some form of unity would be preserved. It would make independence smoother and encourage British civil servants and soldiers to stay on. It would also reassure the Princes and bring them to the negotiating table. According to Auchinleck’s secretary, there was also a strategic element for the Chiefs of Staff:
In case of war with Russia, they could have strategic bases and other facilities in the North-West of the subcontinent. Besides, it will allow them the use of the Muslims’ manpower and the goodwill and support of the other Muslim States. It will also ensure the independence and integrity of Afghanistan. At the same time it will have a stabilising effect on India and keep her on the right path.434
The plan, now labelled ‘Plan Partition’, ticked all the boxes providing for an early transfer of power, retained the essential unity of India and gave Jinnah his desired Pakistan. Edwina was not part of the discussions, but her persuasive powers were deployed by Dickie to bring round Nehru, who saw membership of the Commonwealth as at odds with his view that India should be a sovereign republic. ‘We have made real friends with him and whatever else happens, I feel this friendship is sincere and will last,’ wrote Dickie about the four days Nehru had spent with them.435 Edwina had saved her husband’s career.
Mountbatten won approval of the new plan and left to sell it to a bemused Cabinet – so much for his claimed plenipotentiary powers – who felt they had only recently agreed another plan. Whilst Dickie saw various ministers, especially Churchill, who as opposition leader was crucial to support the new legislation through Parliament, Edwina caught up with Malcolm Sargent and spent a few days at Nada’s villa in the South of France. The plan now cleared by the Cabinet, the Mountbattens returned to sell it to the Indians.
At 10.00 a.m. on 2 June, a few days after returning to Delhi, Mountbatten called the Indian leaders together and gave out copies of the ‘Immediate Transfer of Power’, asking for their reactions by midnight. W
ith minor quibbles, Congress, their dream of a united India in tatters, agreed but Jinnah, who had achieved his separate if ‘moth-eaten’ Pakistan, was reiterating his demands: a Pakistan with Punjab and Bengal undivided, and an 800-mile corridor linking East and West Pakistan. He said he needed a week to secure the support of the Council of the All-India Muslim League.
It looked like the plan would be defeated yet again, as Congress had only accepted on the basis that the Muslim League would simultaneously agree. Mountbatten then asked if Jinnah, who appeared prepared to lose his dream of Pakistan, would allow the Viceroy to say he had his support. The Muslim League leader nodded imperceptibly.
On 4 June, Dickie announced his plan at a news conference for 300 journalists. Speaking without notes for 45 minutes, Mountbatten outlined the plan and answered questions. The message was clear. Indians had wanted independence and partition. They must make it work themselves. Asked when Independence might come, he paused for a moment and then almost casually – this detail was not included in the summary sent to London – said 15 August.436 It left 72 days to take the required bill through Parliament and divide a continent.
Francis Ingall, an Indian Army officer, was at dinner with the Mountbattens when Partition was brought up:
‘It all seems so sudden . . .’ someone remarked. There was a silence; everyone was waiting for the Viceroy’s reaction. Lord Mountbatten smoothly agreed that it was perhaps rather ‘sudden’, but went on to say that in his experience that was the best way to get things done. ‘You give your staff a plan,’ he said, ‘and ask how long they need to put the plan into operation. Let us say they estimate four weeks. Then you tell them, “Do it in two!” Everyone is shocked into action and you surprise your enemy.’ Whereupon Ingall’s voice was heard to say, ‘And who is your enemy, sir?’437
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