by India Hicks
Daily Routine
My father and I would ride every morning at 6:30am on the ridge above Delhi with a couple of armed bodyguards. Then we would have a family breakfast together if possible, when my mother was not rushing off to see refugee camps and riot devastation, and then meetings began at 10am – or at least that is how things were organised to begin with. We had a very hectic social diary on top of my parents’ work. And with my parents’ emphasis on an open and approachable policy for Viceroy’s House, each week we gave two garden parties; three or four lunches for about thirty people and two or three larger dinners at which the mix of guests had to be, at my father’s insistence, at least fifty per cent Indian.
My father was very aware that his wife and daughter could help enormously with his work by socialising and mixing with his contacts and their families; our diaries are therefore litanies of social events:
Friday 28th March
I went down for dinner and then we went on to a party given by Pandit Nehru for the delegates and saw some dancing displays. I met Nehru’s daughter, Mrs Gandhi, his niece Lekha and her mother Mrs Pandit, who Miss Lankester wanted me to contact.
Saturday 29th March
I went with Mummy to a reception at the Lady Irwin College given by the All India Women’s Conference for all the women delegates of the Inter Asian Conference. Being already rather dark and having got separated from Mummy, everyone seemed convinced that I was the Palestinian delegate.
The family with the Domestic Staff in December 1947.
Monday 31st March
We had a big and very tedious lunch party and I again sat next to the Maharajah of Kapurthala who again asked me what we had been able to go and see, very awkward as one of his wives has just committed suicide off the Qutb Minar. [This was a 13th century site that my parents had found time to take me to see.]
Saturday 5th April
We had a big lunch party including Pandit Nehru and the Indonesian premier, Mr Sjahrir who has just arrived. I sat next to Mr Krishna Menon, Nehru’s representative in Europe and in manners far more English than any Englishman.
Saturday 12th April
…had another enormous garden party.
My mother with my father at his desk in the Viceroy’s study.
The Moghul Gardens at Viceroy’s House.
Mountbatten’s Study
This was the epicentre of my father’s first few weeks in India. It was the place he would receive people.
If you were going to see him for a meeting, you’d be driven up to the front of the house, through the sentries who would be rather decorative. Then there would be security in khaki behind them with a revolver at the ready and the police would have a list of people expected. You were driven up to the north courtyard, where the Aides de Camp (ADC) room was, and an ADC would come out and greet you. If it was a business meeting, there was ADC1 to greet you – they took it in turns. ADC1 was for the Viceroy, ADC2 was for the Vicereine, ADC3 was guests. Or if I had something very special, ADC3 would do me as well. But it was really guests. You then went in a side door where again there was a secretary who would take you through to my father’s study. It overlooked the Moghul Gardens, so he and his guests could easily walk into them during or after a meeting.
The Moghul Gardens
‘The gardens, although rather too terrific, are looking perfectly lovely now,’ I wrote. After we arrived, Mr Reader, the head gardener, duly attended my mother and asked if there were any orders about the gardens. They were world famous – and still are, they’re kept exactly the same to this day. My mother knew very little, unlike Lady Willingdon who had taken a great interest in the gardens. So she just said, ‘Carry on, you’re the expert.’
Unfortunately we were going to have a big Asian relations conference and we were also expecting a Tibetan delegation on the 1st April, but because Mr Reader knew nothing of these plans and presumably hadn’t actually consulted the ADCs who must have known about the events, when we wanted to step out for a garden party all the turf had been rolled up and taken away.
The Heat
If the huge house, the hectic entertainment schedule, the hundreds of servants, the political issues surrounding us, and the list of contacts we had to meet weren’t enough to contend with, there was also the omnipresent heat. Having left the coldest English winter on record we now found ourselves in the hottest weather Delhi had experienced for seventy-five years. Of course at this season the Viceregal entourage would retire to the cool hills of Simla with the rest of the British, but we could not afford this luxury. There simply wasn’t a moment to lose, so we stayed down in the furnace.
Thursday 3rd April
Most of the shops are already closing and moving up to Simla and really only the barest necessities seem to remain for the few who stay down during the hot weather.
Monday 7th April
We moved our rooms, changing into the opposite wing as in the hot weather it is almost impossible to live permanently on the south side. It is also almost impossible to live on the top floor under the roof. As we have a large indoor staff and the house consists entirely of immense passages but very few bedrooms, it makes the question of accommodation an absolute nightmare.
Delhi
During our first few weeks we had very little time to explore our surroundings but I did see a little as I wrote to my friend Mary: ‘Delhi itself is an extraordinary place. New Delhi with all the government buildings, army headquarters, the Secretariat and Viceroy’s House has only been built over the last twenty years. It all runs according to plan with great vistas and arches, parks and roundabouts and looks lovely at night with some of the buildings lit up, but it is so spacious that it loses all atmosphere and the people themselves, as so often seems the case in capital cities, are very artificial. But it is much more fun now with all the foreign representatives coming in and amongst the Americans, Chinese, French, Dutch, Belgians and Afghanistanis etc there are one or two girls from about sixteen to thirty who really are extremely nice.
Old Delhi, on the other hand, is first what one imagines, colourful, crowded, smelly but fascinating and complete in atmosphere. It merges into the new City but even then it is about eight miles from where we live at the other end so one can’t just walk into it which is a pity.’
We had little time to accustom ourselves to our new lives as immense problems were waiting to be solved.
1st April: The Tibetan delegation at Viceroy’s House. They were very brisk in dispensing their gifts of white scarves and gold dust because they were anxious to get to the Delhi races on time.
A Huge Task:
March – April 1947
Within a couple of days we met Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru. When my father was in India with the Prince of Wales in 1921 Gandhi had secretly been arrested. My father had been keen for the Prince of Wales to meet him. But my father was a brash 21-year-old and much the most junior member of the staff so his suggestion came to nothing. When he finally met him in 1947 he felt it was a very special occasion.
Operation Seduction
Before we had flown out to India, my father had already worked out that if he was to hit the ground running he would need to meet the four most important personalities behind the opposing political ideas. He had already contacted Mahatma Gandhi and Jawarlarhal Nehru before he arrived, and he then invited Mr Jinnah and Vallabhbhai Patel. They were about to have a charm offensive unleashed upon them – one of my father’s disarming tools before he would launch in with his pragmatic strategies for movement and solution.
‘The situation is everywhere electric...
the mine may go up at any moment. If we
do not make up our minds in the next two
months... there will be pandemonium.’
Lord Ismay March 1947
Monday 31st March
Mr Gandhi came to talk to Daddy and I went in with Mummy to meet him. He really is a remarkable old man and a great character. Crowds of his hangers-on swarmed about outside
the house all the afternoon. Intending to come for an hour he stayed for two and a half.
Tuesday 1st April
Mr Gandhi arrived at nine to walk round the gardens before resuming his talk with Daddy. He had his breakfast during their discussions, apparently a unique honour for us for him to eat before an Englishman.
Gandhi’s first visit to Viceroy’s House.
It was important to meet Gandhiji as soon as possible because he was ‘Bapu’: the Father of the Nation. All the impetus for the ‘Quit India’ programme had been his and Motilial Nehru’s, Nehru’s father. They were the older, wiser generation and the others were considered youngsters, although they were all over fifty years old at this time.
‘Gandhi will be seen by history as on
a par with Christ and Buddha.’
Louis Mountbatten 1948
Gandhi was Nehru’s mentor. For the servants at Viceroy’s House, Gandhi’s visit was like God and royalty walking in together and they would bow and fall to the ground, such was his importance to them.
Growing up in England, we had heard a lot about him. I’m afraid the ignorant English take on him was ‘a funny little man in a loincloth.’ In fact, he did wear his shawl to come to Viceroy’s House, I think largely because it wasn’t yet that hot although it was the beginning of March, but also my father’s study was air-conditioned and quite cool. After the initial photographs of the three of them outside the house, as they turned to go in, Gandhi put his hand on my mother’s shoulder, because he was quite frail and quite old. He was so used to his great niece, one of his ‘crutches’, always being there that he’d always have a hand on one of these girls for support. So instinctively he put his hand for support on my mother’s shoulder. This would have been welcomed by my mother of course, but sadly this photograph caused real outrage in England when it was seen. They thought it was not appropriate at all that this ‘black hand should be placed on this white shoulder.’
The next day, Gandhiji made a great concession to eat his habitual goat curds at Viceroy’s House with the Viceroy.
He offered it to my father, who politely tried to refuse and then Gandhiji, with a lovely mischievous smile, insisted. My father said it was the most disgusting green porridge that he’d ever had.
Jawaharlal Nehru
It was important that my father spoke with Nehru early because he, with Vallabhbhai Patel, led the Indian Congress Party. He was a Kashmiri Brahmin but spoke, and wrote beautiful English (much better than our own – he was educated at Harrow and Cambridge). He was such a civilised person and such fun, and was the one person that the future of India depended on.
I suppose the first time I met him I would not have dared call him Panditji, that came later as we got to know him; it would have been Mr Nehru. I was nervous. My parents had met him before of course. He and Gandhiji were obviously the key figures in the whole situation. It is a great moment to meet such an important man, and how very often it is a terrible disappointment. You expect so much, having heard so much, especially when you are about seventeen. It is shattering if they behave in a normal way. One is terribly disillusioned. But with Panditji, it could never be a disappointment, because he had such charm. I have no idea what he said to me except that we just shook hands and he said ‘How do you do?’ But to shake hands with Panditji and to be smiled at by him was something very special. He had such tremendous warmth and you really felt that he was delighted to meet you, and particularly, I think, young people always felt this with him. His air was far from patronising, there was no condescension. You just felt that he, and Gandhiji, were the most special people you were ever likely to meet.
This portrait was given to me by Nehru. The inscription reads ‘Pammy, from Mamu 1948.’
Panditji was seldom aloof with us. But he was definitely a person who went into great silences and one would never have thoughtlessly intruded upon or interrupted him at that moment. One felt that he was wrestling with problems and wanted to be alone. But then, an hour later, he had changed. He would have resolved the problem he was struggling with and he would have that enormous charm again. This was typical of the speed with which his moods could change. He could lose his temper so quickly. I remember one day too many people gave my parents autograph books to sign, the crowd was overbearing, thrusting them in their faces and he became impassioned and took all the autograph books and threw them in the air. My mother was very shocked, but he had a wonderful way of putting his arm around one’s shoulders and giving one a hug and everything seemed fine.
Panditji was one of the wisest people I have ever met. You know the kind of intolerant remark one would make at seventeen or eighteen when one thinks one knows the solutions to the world’s problems. I sat next to him once at one of the big dinners at Viceroy’s House. I was getting very indignant about the behaviour of the ‘Pukka Sahib’ sort of British in India and I was saying, ‘But it’s terrible, how can they behave like this?’ and Panditji just looked at me and said, ‘Oh, I should not get so excited about it. When I go to England I am always mortified by the behaviour of the Indians. You will always find that people out of their own country appear to least advantage: it happens all the world over.’ He never would allow one to get away with making a silly remark.
Another time when I sat next to him at dinner, we talked about my mongoose. Panditji was telling me that when he was in prison the mongooses were always very popular. This led to me say how dreadful it must have been for him to have been imprisoned for so many years. He acknowledged that it was frustrating not to be able to have access to all the reference books he would have liked when writing The Discovery of India and Glimpses of World History but that the good thing about prison was that it gave one time to think and everyone needs time to think. He added, with a smile, ‘It would do you good to be in prison for a while.’ I was amazed that he showed no bitterness. But Gandhiji had taught that the struggle was against the Raj, and not the people. Those who suffered terms of imprisonment without trial for anything from ten to twenty years with their families and children, could yet come to Viceroy’s House and all it stood for with no trace of bitterness, and be prepared to extend true friendship. It is a particularly wonderful part of the Indian character.
Vallabhbhai Patel
Patel, Nehru’s Congress colleague, on the other hand, was a hard trade union man. He was pragmatic and tough. When Nehru, the urbane idealist, would go off at a passionate tangent, Patel would say ‘Don’t go ahead of the people so far, come back, take them with you.’ They were a very good team. He too was a disciple of Gandhiji. He had worked with him in 1922 organising civil disobedience and had risen through the ranks of Congress since then to become a respected leader.
I remember a funny incident with this severe man at lunch one day. My mother was forever taking her shoes off under the table because she had quite high heels. And Vallabhbhai had taken his sandals off and we could see that she and he were chuckling. Lots of chuckling was going on and of course he was trying to get her shoes on and she was trying to get his sandals on.
Vallabhbhai Patel.
Mohammed Ali Jinnah
Mr Jinnah – my father rarely called him anything else – was a fastidious man. He was extremely sophisticated and unlike the other Indian leaders always dressed in an immaculate English style rather than national dress. He was a Muslim but only spoke in English, which he spoke perfectly, whenever he condescended to speak. He had been intent on creating Pakistan ever since he had been introduced to the concept at the history-shaping meeting in the Waldorf in London in 1933.
He did not fall for my father’s charm offensive in those first days – which must have been working at full power. I was obviously ousted when the going got tough as my diary entry for 6th April says, ‘I had dinner with the ADCs as Jinnah and his sister came to talk business.’ At first my parents were very optimistic about the chance to mediate between Nehru and Congress, and Jinnah and the Muslim League. As my mother wrote in her diary of that same evening, �
�Fascinating evening, two very clever and queer people. I rather liked them but found them fanatical on their Pakistan and quite impractical.’ Within a few meetings this optimism lapsed.
My father could talk of nothing else because he could not crack Jinnah and this had never happened to him before. He later admitted that he didn’t realise how impossible his task was going to be until he met Jinnah. He has since often been accused of being anti-Muslim league but that was not the right way of looking at the problem – Congress made themselves open to my father and courted his help. Jinnah was the opposite and rejected my father’s involvement whenever he could.
Of course the famous story of Jinnah’s first meeting with my parents was about the comment that backfired at their photoshoot. Jinnah was meticulous and would have prepared a joke – presumably, of course, it was delivered before they were posed: as he had assumed that my mother would be photographed between him and my father, when asked to pose he said, ‘Ah – a rose between two thorns.’ Unfortunately it was he who was placed in the middle of the composition and not my mother.
5th April: First meeting with Jinnah. ‘A rose between two thorns.’
It became perfectly apparent once my father had met all four leaders and taken on board their views (and the intransigence of Mr Jinnah), that there was no way they were going to be able to keep peace while this impasse remained and that it was vital to transfer power as quickly as possible so that the various leaders could make their own decisions. If they were still in waiting, nothing would get done because everything needed their approval. If they were in power themselves, then decisions could be taken more quickly.