Beyond the Lines: An Autobiography

by Kuldip Nayar

  Gandhi’s secretary, Pyarelal, has defended him and recorded on 1 June 1947 in his diary: ‘Let it not be said that Gandhi was a party to India’s vivisection. The Congress has practically decided to accept Partition and as Gandhi said they have been handed a wooden loaf in this new plan. If they eat it, they die of colic. If they leave it, they starve.’ In his book, India Wins Freedom, Azad states he was against Partition and claims to have warned Nehru that ‘history would never forgive us if we agreed to Partition. The verdict would be that India was not divided by the Muslim League but by the Congress.’

  However, Acharya Kripalani, a top Congress leader, challenged this contention: ‘I do not know what private conference he [Azad] had with Gandhi. All I know is that Azad never opposed the partition resolution at the Congress Working Committee or the All-India Congress Committee.’ Kripalani made no secret of this observation and repeated it to me even during Azad’s lifetime. Kripalani in fact went beyond this and claimed that had Azad and other nationalist Muslims opposed Partition, it might not have taken place. ‘But they were always obsessed with the right of self-determination for the Muslims,’ Kripalani alleged.

  At the CWC meeting, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan said with tears in his eyes: ‘Ham to tabah ho gaye [we are ruined]. Before long we shall become aliens in Hindustan. Our long fight will end with the creation of Pakistan.’ Ghaffar Khan at this stage sought a third option: an independent state of Pakhtoonistan, but this was not in Mountbatten’s scheme of things. He gave only two choices to the NWFP: to remain in India or join Pakistan. A plebiscite on these options was bound to favour Islamic Pakistan. Gandhi did try to intervene on his behalf but nothing came of it.

  Subsequently, when the plebiscite was held in the NWFP, Ghaffar Khan and his brother Khan Sahib called upon their followers to boycott it because the propaganda at that time was that the Muslims could either support the Quran or the Gita. It was Islam versus Hinduism. The one-sided plebiscite culminated in a vote that favoured Pakistan.

  Baluchistan, another unit of the proposed state of Pakistan, was never in consonance with Jinnah’s philosophy. For centuries the Baluchis had not considered themselves a part of the Indian subcontinent and insisted on a special status in their relationship with British India. Mir Ahmad Yar Khan, the then Khan of Kalat, argued that they were not in any way akin to the people of India. During the visit of the Cabinet Mission he submitted a memorandum: ‘Kalat is an independent and sovereign state. Kalat is not an Indian state. Regions under British control should be handed over to the Kalat state and on the lapse of British sovereignty; the rights hitherto vested in the British Crown should automatically be transferred to the Kalat government.’

  On 11 August, three days before the inaugural session of Pakistan’s constituent assembly, a meeting was held under the chairmanship of representative of the Crown, Lord Azuma, with Jinnah, Liaquat Ali, the Khan of Kalat, and Sir Sultan Ahmad, the legal advisor. The government of Pakistan recognized Kalat as an independent and sovereign state. It was also announced that talks on defence, foreign affairs, and communication would soon be held at Karachi.

  The Kalat government made a formal declaration of its independence and on 12 August 1947 hoisted its national flag. Jinnah proposed a merger of Kalat state with Pakistan but the Khan refused. Jinnah issued an order on 15 April 1948 ending the Khan’s authority. Prince Abdul Kareem Khan, the brother of the Khan of Kalat, revolted against the merger of Kalat. A compromise was reached with the creation of ‘Baluchistan States Union’, which meant the creation of a union of the former states of Baluchistan, separate from the one unit of West Pakistan. With the approval of the Government of Pakistan, the Baluchistan States Union was announced on 9 April 1952. However, the struggle for autonomy by Baluchis continues to this day. ‘If we had common border with you we would have joined India long ago,’ a top Baluchi leader told me in 2009.

  The AICC met on 14 June 1947 and accepted the partition plan, but only after a heated discussion. Both Patel and Pant, respectively, who moved and seconded the resolution, were on the defensive. All they said was that partition was the only possible solution under the existing circumstances. Gandhi spoke about political realism, not on the merits of the proposal. He said: ‘The Congress has signed on your behalf. You can disown them, but you should do so only if you can start a big movement. I do not think you can.’ Pant told me, when I was his information officer, that they should not have accepted Partition because this aggravated the ‘Hindu–Muslim problem’.

  What disturbed me was the hostage theory which was influencing more and more people. Even secular-minded Congressmen repeated it many times at the AICC meeting: ‘The Hindus in Pakistan need not have any fear as there would be 45 million Muslims in India and if there was any oppression of Hindus in Pakistan, the Muslims in India would bear the consequences.’ The argument had communal overtones. India was fighting for Independence, a secular dispensation, and the Congress advocated a pluralistic society. It never even hinted at a Hindu state so why did some Congressmen talk in terms of the hostage theory? The only explanation is that a majority of Congressmen at the meeting lacked a firm commitment to secularism, regarding it only as a policy not a faith. This lack of commitment continues to trouble post-Independence India.

  The resolution on Partition was adopted on 15 June 1947. Of the 218 members present, 157 voted in favour and 29 against. The loudest dissenter was Aruna Asaf Ali, who said that the proposal was a ‘victory for Jinnah and Churchill’. The All-India Council of the Muslim League had already accepted the plan in principle at its meeting on 9 June and had authorized Jinnah to ‘work on all the details’ as the partition of Punjab and Bengal was not to their liking.

  The League’s representatives from UP, Bihar, and other provinces, the states which were to stay in India, were concerned about the fallout: the inevitable hostility of a Hindu majority which was vehemently opposed to the Muslims’ demand for a separate homeland. The fact that Pakistan would have two wings with no land connection worried them. Jinnah had once suggested a 800-mile long corridor to link West and East Pakistan, but neither the British government nor the Congress took the proposal seriously, nor did he himself pursue it.

  One person who met Mountbatten before the announcement of an agreement by the Congress and the Muslim League to Partition was Azad. He implored Mountbatten to defer the implementation of his formula by a year to 15 August 1948, instead of 15 August 1947. Mountbatten refused. Perhaps things might have taken a very different turn had Partition been so postponed. The two figures dominating the political scene at the time died within a year of Partition: Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic on 30 January 1948 and Jinnah died of cancer on 11 September 1948, although his ailment was common knowledge six months earlier. (It is said that Britain knew about it before Partition but did not want to reveal it because the Churchillian elements wanted to leave Partition as their parting gift.)

  Humayun Kabir, who edited Azad’s biography, told me that Azad thought the Congress leaders (Nehru was then 58 years old and Patel 72) accepted Partition because they had grown too tired and old to resort to yet another agitation to free India. In fact, almost all the Congress and League leaders were in a hurry to come to power. Even a truncated India was acceptable to Nehru and Patel just as a truncated Pakistan was to Jinnah.

  The process of division was clumsy and hurried, particularly when Mountbatten advanced the date from 3 June 1948 to 15 August 1947. Why did he do this? He understood the enormity of the task and the appalling difficulties involved but still decided to go ahead. His papers, too, failed to throw any light on this. I asked several historians and politicians in India and the UK about why he preponed the date.

  Campbell-Johnson told me that Mountbatten selected 15 August because it was the day when the Japanese surrendered to the Allies, ending the Second World War. Mountbatten remembered hearing the news of the Japanese surrender for the first time in Churchill’s room and hoped to associate Britain’s ‘surrender’
to India with himself playing a leading role.

  Some British Foreign Office hands disagreed with this reasoning. Their argument was that Mountbatten was lobbying for a more senior position in the Royal Navy and did not want his appointment in India to block his aspiration. He eventually got the appointment he sought as naval commander of Southeast Asia in 1955.

  When I checked with Mountbatten himself, he said he had to change the date because he could not hold the country together. ‘Things were slipping from my hands,’ he said repeatedly. ‘The Sikhs were up in arms in the Punjab, the great Calcutta killing had taken place, and communal tension was prevailing all over. On top of it, there had been the announcement that the British were leaving. Therefore, I myself decided to quit sooner.… This was not to the liking of Lord Attlee,’ Mountbatten added, ‘but he had given me full powers.’

  ‘But your act of advancing the date by ten months resulted in the killing of over a million on both sides of the border,’ I charged. It was as if I had touched a raw nerve because he suddenly became pensive and lapsed into silence. After a while he said that in the 1947 Partition riots nearly 2.5 million people had died but he had saved three to four million people from starvation during the 1943 Bengal famine by giving 10 per cent of the space on his ships for the transport of foodgrains to Calcutta despite Churchill’s opposition. ‘Well, before Providence I can say that the balance is in my favour,’ said Mountbatten, adding: ‘Wherever colonial rule has ended, there has been bloodshed. This is the price you pay.’ (Some books subsequently revealed that Churchill had intentionally denied food grains to India.)

  Mountbatten told me about the message Rajagopalachari sent him as early as 1948: ‘If you had not transferred power when you did, there would have been no power to transfer.’ To my mind, Mountbatten’s explanation was flimsy and an indirect admission of guilt. His haste created panic and an atmosphere of unease and distrust began growing. It was a dangerous time, but he took no precautions to relieve the pain of migrants, much less protect them. He took things far too lackadaisically.

  Initially, two constituent assemblies, one for India and the other for Pakistan, were established to draft the constitution of either country. Both the Congress and the Muslim League nominated persons for the assemblies. It was clear that the minorities in both the countries would stay where they were and enjoy equal rights. Khaliq-ul-Zaman was nominated to India’s constituent assembly and Bhim Sen Sachar to Pakistan’s. In actual fact, the constituent assembly in India was already in session.

  This was too orderly in a disorderly scene. Leaders on both sides were totally unaware whether this was a reality. Living in an atmosphere of communal tension for seven years after the Pakistan resolution was passed in 1940, an undefined wall of suspicion and separation had enshrouded all. People were not sure whether they could live peacefully in their homes at a time when propaganda was focusing on their different religions; their different ethos. They were bound to search out people of their community to experience a sense of safety, especially when even civil servants, the police, and the armed forces of their religion left for the other side.

  Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher showed me during my tenure at London an oblong teak table at 10, Downing Street, where the transfer of power was discussed and the Independence Act finalized. This is where your country’s future was decided, she said, or something to that effect. I looked at the table longingly, recalling in my mind India’s history of struggles and triumphs. Did the table bear the testimony to those events? I wish there was a plaque to signify the transfer of power.

  When the Independence Bill was debated in the British parliament, Winston Churchill had angrily remarked, ‘Power will go into the hands of rascals, rogues, and freebooters. Not a bottle of water or a loaf of bread shall escape taxation; only the air will be free and the blood of these hungry millions will be on head of Attlee.’

  Looking back, I cannot but blame Mountbatten for doing virtually nothing to ensure the protection of the minorities notwithstanding his assurances to Azad: ‘I shall not merely use the armed police, I will order the army and the air force to act and will use tanks and airplanes to suppress all those who want to create trouble.’ He did not deliver on his promise.

  When rivers of blood flowed in Punjab and elsewhere in the subcontinent, and fires of destruction engulfed homes and hearths, ruthless action was required to stop the carnage but there was only paralysis. On 23 June Jinnah begged Mountbatten to ‘shoot Muslims’, if necessary. On the other side, Nehru suggested handing over cities to the military, but Mountbatten’s response was wanting. He did not wish to annoy either India or Pakistan because his dream was to become the common governor general of the two countries. Jinnah rejected the proposal of a common governor general and Pakistan suffered the consequences of his refusal. It lost a fair division of assets, the delivery of which a common governor general would have ensured. Jinnah’s predicament was that any joint supervision might suggest a link with India and he wanted a clean partition with no room for confusion.

  It was not as if the Boundary Force, formed on 1 August, to quell the riots, was short of manpower; its strength was 25,000 including competent officers like Brigadier Mohammed Ayub Khan, who later became Pakistan’s president. Even so, the force had a high proportion of British officers who had no interest in what happened to either India or Pakistan, and were keen to return to Britain and didn’t want to be caught in an operation which might tie them to the subcontinent for an indefinite period. The British commander of the force, General Thomas W. Rees, had given specific instructions ‘not to get involved and to protect only European lives’. This callous attitude and lack of interest proved to be the undoing of the force.

  The report submitted by the Boundary Force after Independence was brutally frank: ‘Throughout, the killing was pre-medieval in its ferocity. Neither age nor sex was spared: mothers with babies in the arms were cut down, speared, or shot. Both sides were equally merciless.’ There was, however, no explanation of why the Boundary Force had so criminally neglected its responsibilities and duties. The problem of delineating the boundaries of a divided Punjab and divided Bengal stared the Congress and the League sternly in the face. After failing to get the UN to nominate the Boundary Commission’s members, Jinnah, who had heard Cyril Radcliffe, an outstanding lawyer, arguing complex legal cases in London courts, suggested his name to Mountbatten. Nehru approved his name after consulting ‘that sneaky fellow Krishna Menon’, as Radcliffe put it when I met him in London on 5 October 1971.

  Hindus were expecting Lahore to be included in India and Muslims had the same expectation about Calcutta going to Pakistan. Both were disappointed. Radcliffe told me that he never had the slightest doubt from the very outset that Calcutta (Jinnah had said it was no use having East Bengal without Calcutta) should go to India. I was astonished when Radcliffe said: ‘I first gave Lahore to India but then realized I had to give Muslims some big city in West Punjab because they had no capital so I changed my proposal.’ When I told him that the Muslims in Pakistan were unhappy over the line he had drawn, he said that they should be ‘grateful’ that he gave them Lahore, although his initial decision was different.

  When I complained to him that this was a strange way of dividing the subcontinent, Radcliffe explained that he was so rushed that he had no time to go into the details. Even district maps were not available and the ones there were, were incorrect. What could he have done in one and a half months? he asked.

  I could understand Radcliffe’s predicament. Still, I was horrified at the way the subcontinent was divided and the future of its people decided. When I asked Radcliffe if he had any regrets, he said he had none, adding that he had done injustice to non-Muslims in Punjab and Muslims in Bengal. Both should have been given more territory than they got.

  The land of the five rivers, with its magnificent irrigation systems, which was ruled for so long by the Punjab Unionist party, representing all three communities, had become a land of divide
d communities and divided waterways. It was one thing to draw a line; quite another to deal with the severing of age-old relationships and long-established patterns of trade and communication. Still, Radcliffe hoped for joint control over river headworks.

  I told Radcliffe about the controversy over Kashmir. He had read about it in the press after his return to London, he said. He had never imagined that Kashmir or, for that matter, Gurdaspur or Ferozepur, would create any problem. He denied having had any talks on this matter with Mountbatten who was supposed to have ‘influenced’ him to ‘alter’ the dividing line in northern Punjab to give India access to Kashmir.

  Nevertheless, there is an intriguing letter dated 8 August 1947 from George Abell, private secretary to Mountbatten, to Stuart Abbott, private secretary to the Punjab governor, Evan Jenkins. The latter had asked for advance information on possible boundary lines to enable him to make necessary arrangements to check bloodshed. The letter said: ‘I enclose a map showing roughly the boundary which Sir Cyril Radcliffe proposes to demarcate in his award, and a note describing it. There will not be any great change from this boundary, but it will have to be accurately defined with reference to village and zilla [district] boundaries in the Lahore district.’ (The Radcliffe Report was said to have been finalized on that very day, 8 August, although it was published five days later.)