At eight-thirty the next morning, the Mountbattens – Edwina in a long, gold lamé dress with a wreath of gold leaves on her head –entered the Durbar Hall for their second swearing-in in five months. Dickie became the first Constitutional Head of the new India.
That afternoon they were taken by carriage to a children’s fête and to watch the new Indian flag being unfurled. Thirty thousand people had been expected, a quarter of a million had come. Escorted by their mounted bodyguard, the Mountbattens were stuck 25 yards from the flagstaff with the crowds trying to climb into the carriage. Mountbatten reported, ‘we ended with four Indian ladies with their children, the Polish wife of a British officer and an Indian press man who crawled up behind.’455 The planned parade and speeches had to be abandoned. All they could do was give orders to hoist the flag and fire a salute.
A state banquet for 100, speeches and at 9.15 p.m., in the State drawing-rooms, the Mountbattens received almost 3,000 guests, each of whom was presented to the new Governor-General and his wife. Outside the Moghul gardens sparkled with coloured lights. For Mountbatten it had been ‘the most remarkable and inspiring day of my life’.456 Congratulations arrived from around the world, including a telegram from Attlee:
My warmest thanks to you on this day which sees successful achievement of a task of an unexampled difficulty. The continual skill displayed in meeting every difficulty has been amazing. Your short tenure of Viceroyalty has been one of the most memorable in a long list. In this message of thanks, I include Edwina, Ismay and other helpers.457
Mountbatten was raised in rank, taking the title Earl Mountbatten of Burma.458
The Mountbattens had done it together, a fact Dickie acknowledged, writing to ‘the person who helped me most . . . Thank you, my pet, with all my heart.’459
Radcliffe, Jenkins and other officials had already left, not wishing to be part of the celebrations.460
CHAPTER 19
Governor-General
The next day, the new Earl Mountbatten of Burma handed copies of Radcliffe’s report to the Indian and Pakistani leaders, who were given two hours to study it before a meeting at Government House.461 The response was predictable – everyone was unhappy. Pakistan objected to Calcutta and the symbolically and strategically important Gurdaspur – India’s only route to Kashmir – going to India; India that the Chittagong Hill tracts with only a three per cent Muslim population were now in Pakistan.462 Mountbatten and Radcliffe’s hope that the two countries would work together after Independence to solve some of the more difficult infrastructure problems had proved optimistic.
One of the criticisms directed against Mountbatten is that he favoured a strong India against a weak Pakistan. One example, often quoted and therefore worth examining in detail, was the tehsil – an administrative area of some 400 square miles – of Ferozepur, which was equally divided between Indian and Muslim populations. It was the main arsenal of the Indian Army, with an important bridge over the Sutlej River. The headwaters, vital for the irrigation of Bikaner, had been awarded to Pakistan.
It is claimed that Radcliffe may have had pressure put on him by Mountbatten after the Maharajah of Bikaner, learning of the decision, saw Mountbatten and threatened to accede to Pakistan unless the decision was changed.463 How did outsiders know about the boundary decisions? Most probably through Rao Sahib V.D. Ayer, assistant secretary to the Boundary Commission and a Hindu, who leaked to V.P. Menon, a close associate of Nehru.464 Certainly, many of the boundary decisions had leaked out early. Auchinleck’s private secretary, Shahid Hamid, noted in his diary on 9 August:
Everyone is talking about the impending Boundary Awards . . . Most of its salient points have already leaked out through the staff of the Boundary Commission and (Mountbatten’s) own staff . . . It is common talk that Mountbatten is busy changing it, giving India . . . the Ferozepur headworks.465
In early August, the Governor of the Punjab, Sir Evan Jenkins, had been sent a map by George Abell showing the Ferozepur salient awarded to Pakistan, and this had been changed two days later after he received a cryptic telegram ‘eliminate salient’. Decisions, even at this late stage, were still provisional, and it is possible Radcliffe simply changed his mind, feeling that the Sutlej River was a more natural boundary than the principle of ‘contiguous Muslim nationalities’, but it did nothing in the feverish atmosphere to reassure the Muslims.
Sir Francis Mudie, who was staying with Evans in early August, wrote in his unpublished memoir about the boundary change which he felt was not just about irrigation:
This meant that Ferozpur was to go to India just depriving the Pakistan Army of most of its weapons. No explanation of why this sudden change was made at the last moment was given or has ever been given, but I find it difficult to believe that it was not the result of pressure put on Lord Radcliffe by Mountbatten and his Government. This of course, has been strongly denied.466
In Ismay’s papers there is a reference to a meeting between Mountbatten and Radcliffe in which they discussed the problems surrounding irrigation issues. They agreed that if Ferozepur was given to India, then there must be equal favours to Pakistan, such as the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bengal, which was better than the Punjab given the complicating extra factor of the Sikhs.467 This was probably a lunch on 12 August, when Ismay invited Radcliffe and Mountbatten but pointedly did not include Radcliffe’s deputy, Christopher Beaumont.468
Mountbatten was under constant pressure to interfere and there is evidence he may have done so, though whether it was always in India’s favour is more debatable. On 9 August, John Christie wrote in his diary, ‘H.E. is in a tired flap and is having to be strenuously dissuaded from asking Radcliffe to alter his awards.’469 Certainly, Radcliffe seems to have been susceptible to pressure. Philip Noel-Baker, the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, told Attlee in February 1948 that Radcliffe had revised his decision, ‘but we have no knowledge that this was done on the advice of Lord Mountbatten.’470
The immediate response to the boundary decisions was panic and a flood of refugees, as Muslims and Hindus escaped what they perceived might be violence, confiscation of property, persecution and religious discrimination in each respective country, even though Jinnah had insisted that the rights of minorities would be protected. The situation was further enflamed by Sikhs threatening to create a separate Sikh state through terror. By 27 August, it was estimated over ten million people were on the move in the Punjab alone. It also brought a cycle of violence as each atrocity was countered by another in revenge.
At the end of August, the train on which Wenty Beaumont, one of Mountbatten’s ADCs, and his fiancée Sarah, daughter of Pug Ismay, were returning to Britain was ambushed and 100 Muslims killed. Only Beaumont’s bearer, whom they had hidden under their seat, survived. The following day, the Viceroy’s Treasurer and his wife were murdered in another train to Delhi en route to their son’s funeral, also killed in the communal violence. This violence, which had never really gone away since the Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946, now became widespread and especially vicious, with a particular emphasis in the Punjab, with Sikhs and Hindus killing Muslims, and Muslims retaliating against Sikhs. Large gangs, often 600-strong, roamed the area, systematically raping, mutilating and then killing.
The charge sheet against Mountbatten is that he did not sufficiently anticipate the communal violence, especially the dangers posed by the Sikh community; that even when it took place he did too little too late; and that by rushing independence, preparations that might have alleviated the violence were inadequate. It is worth considering each charge.
* * *
The creation of the new state of Pakistan meant the isolation of the Sikh community, who in March 1947 called for their own state, Khalistan, between the rivers Chenab and the Jamna. The problem was that the Sikhs were not in a majority in any part of the Punjab, which made their demand for a state of their own, to include Simla and even Lahore, difficult. A further complication was that neither Hindus,
nor more importantly Muslims, would have agreed to live in a Sikh state.
Mountbatten and his staff had repeatedly been warned by Evan Jenkins that if the Sikhs, a warrior sect, did not have certain holy shrines and at least one canal system, there would be violence. Jenkins also pleaded with Mountbatten to announce the partition decisions before 15 August:
To stop panic and the mad hurrying to and fro of populations . . . I believe that if the representatives of the future Dominions can make it clear now that there is no question of a chaotic changeover, that they mean business, and that they are sending an imposing organisation here to protect the people, with appropriate publicity, it will do much to steady the Punjab.471
On 27 July, Mountbatten was told that if the holy shrine of Nankana Sahib was not awarded to East Punjab, there would be violence. Already the Sikhs had amassed arms and the Muslims had made counter-preparations. A suggestion from V.P. Menon that the shrine should be made a separate state, like the Vatican, was noted, but nothing happened.
Mountbatten did consider arresting Sikh activists and banning the kirpan – a small dagger that Sikhs must carry as an article of faith – but was then advised by Jenkins and his two successors, Sir Chandulal Trivedi and Sir Francis Mudie, that to do so would only inflame an already tense situation. In any case, even if Tara Singh had given grounds to be arrested, others would have taken his place. There was also a concern about being seen to discriminate against a particular community.
That said, Pandit Pant in the United Provinces had arrested the more extreme Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS leadership and had little trouble. In his final retrospective report on his viceroyalty, Mountbatten accepted that he should have arrested communalist activists, but he lacked good intelligence because the Indians now controlled the Intelligence Bureau. The benefit of hindsight.
It has been argued that there were insufficient British troops and they were, in any case, keen to return to Britain, but British troops were available. Some 30,000 British troops and 35,000 Gurkha soldiers remained after independence, who were not due to be demobbed until the end of the year, and if used could have saved lives. There were 18 British infantry brigades, five artillery regiments, three armoured regiments and various support units stationed near or in the Punjab, but they were never utilised. There were also eight squadrons of Tempest fighter-bombers, which could have spotted trouble spots in open country and protected trains and railway lines, but a decision had been taken in July ‘at the highest political and military levels’ that they should not be used offensively.
In July, Sir Arthur Smith, Chief of the Indian General Staff, had published an order ‘NOT to be divulged to Indians’ that British troops were not to be used in communal disturbances except to protect British lives.472 Now that Britain had granted independence, it had no wish to be drawn into a civil war that risked British casualties and losing goodwill on one side or the other, or both. Nehru had made plain his position. ‘I would rather have every village in India go up in flames than keep a single British soldier in India a moment longer than necessary.’473
If there had been a longer timetable for the transfer of power, would the authorities have been better prepared for the violence? According to Mountbatten’s successor as Indian Governor-General, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, ‘If the Viceroy had not transferred power when he did, there could well have been no power to transfer.’474 Equally, Mountbatten’s official biographer Philip Ziegler has argued:
Once the principle of partition had been accepted, it was inevitable that communalism would rage freely. The longer the period before the transfer of power, the worse the tension and the greater the threat that violence would spread . . . delay could only have provoked a far worse catastrophe.475
We will never know but, in any case, the authorities thought they were prepared. The Punjab Boundary Force, under General Pete Rees, had been created at the beginning of August to police the 12 most ‘disturbed’ districts, but the authorities had underestimated the scale of the violence. It had to police 37,500 square miles, 17,000 villages (many not linked by road) and a population of 14.5 million in 212 districts. At its peak, it had only 25,000 men – which meant less than two men per square mile. Jenkins had recommended that at least 100,000 troops were required.476
They did their best, but they were unable to operate within the territory of the bordering Princely States, such as Faridkot, Patiala and Nabha, where gangs often sought refuge. The Force received little support from the local civil authorities, especially the police now riven with communalism, or the new governments. Neither India nor Pakistan liked troops operating on their soil who were not responsible directly to them. General Sir Francis Tuker had advocated an all-Gurkha force, but ten of its 17 battalions had been raised from the Punjab and the soldiers quickly succumbed to the very communalism they were supposed to fight. By the end of August, against the wishes of Mountbatten, Auchinleck and Rees and on the instructions of Nehru and Jinnah, it was wound up.
In his report sent to King George VII at the beginning of September, Mountbatten expressed regret at the disbandment of the Punjab Boundary Force, which:
over-ride military considerations by political ones . . . and the assumption, by the Governments themselves, of direct military control in their respective areas. I was much opposed to this step at first – and am still opposed to it from the purely military view-point, because of the obvious lack of liaison and consequent risk of actual clashes between entirely separately controlled armies . . . But it gradually became apparent that the political leaders of both Dominions felt that their hands were tied until this step was taken.477
Within two months, order had been restored to the Punjab and the refugee crisis had abated, but it had come at an enormous and shameful cost – it is estimated that probably about a million people had died, with many millions horrifically injured and homeless.478
How far was Mountbatten personally to blame? He was certainly taken by surprise at the scale of the migration and violence – but so were many others, including Nehru and Jinnah. He should not have been, as Sir Evan Jenkins and many others had passed on countless warnings as soon as the Mountbattens arrived. Sir George Cunningham, a former governor of the North-West Frontier and private secretary to the Viceroy, felt that ‘if the Punjab had been given time (say eight or nine months) to sort out their services properly, the terrible massacres of August–September–October would never have happened on anything approaching the scale that they did assume.’479
Certainly, if the governors had received advance warning of the boundaries, troops would have been deployed in readiness for any trouble. Mountbatten’s decision not to arrest the Sikh leaders, on the advice of Nehru and the governors-designate of East and West Punjab, Sir Chandulal Trivedi and Sir Francis Mudie, now also looks the wrong call.
Mountbatten’s defenders argue that the violence was largely confined to the Punjab for a limited amount of time and could have been far worse. His critics point out that where preparations were taken with the presence of troops and agitators taken out of circulation, as in Calcutta, there was little trouble. The defenders respond that sometimes an assault on a large refugee column might consist of over 600 men. Against such force, there was nothing the authorities could do. The debate continues.
* * *
On 4 September, V.P. Menon telephoned Mountbatten asking for his help. The Mountbattens immediately returned from their break in Simla and within 48 hours Dickie had set up an Emergency Committee. He now exercised more power than he had ever done as Viceroy. Transport was requisitioned, trains provided with protection, dead bodies picked up in the streets, and cholera injections administered. Finally, some positive action was being taken.
Edwina now came into her own, setting up her own organisation, the United Council for Relief and Welfare, coordinating 15 separate relief organisations and two government ministries, providing medical supplies, food, clothing, shelter and water. Her first action was to ensure the protection of the
families of the Muslim retainers who worked at Government House. Another 5,000 were brought within the compound.
Working 18-hour days, it is estimated in the five months following partition that she undertook 11 tours in the Punjab visiting 78 refugee camps, 46 hospitals and countless convoy encampments, welfare centres, clinics, schools and other institutions. This was to be one of her finest hours.
The violence had brought Nehru closer to Dickie. ‘He has come suddenly to see me alone on more than one occasion – simply and solely for company in his misery; to unburden his soul; and to obtain what comfort I have to give,’ wrote Mountbatten to the King.480 Perhaps more importantly, it had cemented the bonds between Nehru and Edwina. Both of them ventured fearlessly onto the streets attempting to stop the violence and always looking out for each other.
On one occasion, learning that he had gone out alone, Edwina, with Amrit Kaur, went out in search of him to discover him attempting to hold back a group of armed men. On another, he caught a taxi to avert an attack on a Muslim college outside Delhi, only to discover Edwina already there without guards talking down an angry mob.
A further problem, at the end of October, was that some 5,000 Pathan tribesmen moved on Kashmir in a pre-organised plan, thought to have the assistance of the Pakistan authorities, in response to a campaign of genocide against Muslim Kashmiris. The Maharaja, who had yet to commit himself to either India or Pakistan, requested assistance from India to prevent further looting and killing. Mountbatten, as chair of the Indian Defence Council, was drawn into the dispute. The Indians now argued that the state must accede to India before troops could intervene. In fact, they were despatched before the ruler had signed the accession to India and his signature only backdated after pressure from Mountbatten and Nehru. It appeared to be further evidence of how the Mountbattens were in the pocket of Nehru.
The Mountbattens Page 20