3. APPLES IN THE BASKET
1
Pothan Joseph, ‘Mountbatten Quits India’, Swatantra, 19 June 1948.
2
Brian Hoey, Mountbatten: The Private Story (London: Pan Books, 1995), pp. 3, 4,201.
3
Denis Judd, ed., A British Tale of Indian and Foreign Service: The Memoirs of Sir Ian Scott (London: Radcliffe Press, 1999), p. 147.
4
See Penderel Moon, ed., Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal (London: Oxford University Press, 1973).
5
The books I have in mind are Alan Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1951); H. V. Hodson, The Great Divide: Britain–India–Pakistan (London: Hutchinson, 1969); Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, Freedom at Midnight (New Delhi: Rupa, 1975); and Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten: The Official Biography (London: Collins, 1985). For an early revisionist view, see Leonard Mosley, The Last Days of the British Raj (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1961).
6
Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 424.
7
V. P. Menon, Integration of the Indian States (1956; reprint Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1997). There have been some fine studies of individual princely states, and of British policy towards the Maharajas. However, no one since Menon has attempted an analytical overview of the demise of the princely order, with its (often profound) implications for the history of independent India.
8
For a brilliant brief survey of British relations with princely India, see K. M. Pannikar, Indian States, Oxford Pamphlet on Indian Affairs, no. 4 (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1942). See also the essays in Robin Jeffrey, ed., People, Princes and Paramount Power: Society and Politics in Indian Princely States (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978).
9
Quoted in Mario Rodrigues, Batting for the Empire: A Political Biography of Ranjitsinhji (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2003).
10
Ian Copland, The Princes of India in the Endgames of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 227.
11
W. H. Morris-Jones, ‘The Transfer of Power, 1947: A View from the Sidelines’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, 1982, pp. 17–18.
12
S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. 1: 1889–1947 (London: Cape, 1975), p. 359.
13
See Rajmohan Gandhi, Patel: A Life (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Press, 1991), pp. 408–11; SPC, vol. 5, passim.
14
The phrase was coined by Pannikar, and is the underpinning of his classic Asia and Western Dominance (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1959).
15
‘Maharaja of Bikaner’s Appeal to the Princes’, appendix 2 to SPC, vol. 5, pp. 518–24. This appeal was almost certainly drafted by K. M. Pannikar.
16
Penderel Moon to Major Billy Short, 29 March 1947, Mss Eur F179/16, Short Papers, OIOC.
17
A representative view is that of the last head of this department, Sir Conrad Corfield. See his ‘Some Thoughts on British Policy and the Indian States, 1935–47’, in C. H. Philips and Mary Doreen Wainwright, eds, The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970), pp. 527–34.
18
Menon to Sir P. Patrick (under-secretary of state for India), 8 July 1947, in TOP, vol. 12, pp. 1–2.
19
SPC, vol. 5, pp. 536–8.
20
TOP, vol. 12, pp. 36, 51.
21
Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, p. 140.
22
‘Press Communiqué of an Address by Rear-Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma to a Conference of the Rulers and Representatives of Indian States’, TOP, vol. 12, pp. 347–52.
23
See TOP, vol. 12, pp. 585–8; Hodson, The Great Divide, pp. 369f.
24
The words are those of Vallabhbhai Patel, from his statement to the princes of 5 July 1947. See SPC, vol. 5, p. 537.
25
‘Satyagraha Movement in Mysore’, Swatantra, 27 September 1947; H. S. Doreswamy, From Princely Autocracy to People’s Government (Bangalore: Sahitya Mandira, 1993), chapter 9.
26
Menon, Integration of the Indian States, pp. 153–4, 179.
27
See E. M. S. Namboodiripad, ‘Princedom and Democracy’, New Age, August 1956 (a review article on V. P. Menon’s Integration of the Indian States).
28
Robert Trumbull, As I See India (London: Cassell and Co., 1952), pp. 76–7.
29
See speeches at Jaipur, Gwalior and Bikaner in Time Only to Look Forward: Speeches of Rear Admiral The Earl Mountbatten of Burma, as Viceroy of India and Governor-General of the Dominion of India, 1947–8 (London: Nicholas Kaye, 1949), pp. 76–8, 91–3, 102–4.
30
These paragraphs summarize a story told over several hundred pages in Menon, Integration of the Indian States.
31
Menon to V. Shankar (private secretary to Vallabhbhai Patel), 9August 1949, in G. M. Nandurkar, ed., Sardar’s Letters – Mostly Unknown: Post-Centenary, vol. 2 (Ahmedabad: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Smarak Bhavan, 1981), pp. 74–6.
32
As told to me by C. S. Venkatachar, who succeeded V. P. Menon as secretary of the Ministry of States.
33
Hodson, The Great Divide, pp. 367–8.
34
The Travancore story has been principally reconstructed here from TOP, vol. 12, pp. 76–7, 203–4, 232–3, 281–2, 298–9, 335–6, 414, 421–2, 453; supplemented by A. Sreedhara Menon, Triumph and Tragedy in Travancore: Annals of Sir C. P.‘s Sixteen Years (Kottayam: Current Books, 2001), esp. pp. 231–53. But see also A. G. Noorani, ‘C. P. and Independent Travancore’, Frontline, 4 July 2003, and K. C. George, Immortal Punnapra-Vayalar (Thiruvananthapuram: Communist Party of India, 1975).
35
The best, presumably, was Jawaharlal Nehru.
36
Draft letter dated 18 July 1947 from Nawab of Bhopal to Lord Mountbatten, Mss EurD1006 (Major A. E. G. Davy Papers), OIOC.
37
My account of the Bhopal case is based on TOP, vol. 12, pp. 144–5, 291–7, 436–8, 644, 671–2; Copland, The Princes of India, pp. 235–6, 253; Hodson, The Great Divide, pp. 365, 375; Menon, Integration of the Indian States, pp. 118–19.
38
TOP, vol. 12, pp. 603–4, 659–62, 767; Menon, Integration of the Indian States, pp. 116–18; K. M. Pannikar to Vallabhbhai Patel, undated, but probably from late July 1947, in G. M. Nandurkar, ed., Sardar’s Letters – Mostly Unknown, II: Birth Centenary, vol. 5 (Ahmedabad: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Smarak Bhavan, 1978), pp. 55–6.
39
R. M. Lala, ‘Junagadh’, the Current, 27 September 1950; Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, pp. 191–2; Mosley, Last Days, pp. 181–3.
40
Shah Nawaz was the father of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and grandfather of Benazir Bhutto, both future prime ministers of Pakistan.
41
Patel’s feelings on Junagadh are described in Malcolm Darling to Guy Wint, 7 December 1947, Box 60, Darling Papers, CSAS.
42
‘Report by Secretary,Ministry of States, on Junagadh’, in SPC,vol. 7, pp. 688–95.
43
This account is principally based on Menon, Integration of the Indian States, pp. 124–49;Hodson, The Great Divide, pp. 427-40.
44
Rafi Ahmed, ‘Hyderabad Politics’, Swatantra, 29 November 1947.
45
K. M. Munshi, The End of an Era (Hyderabad Memoirs) (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1957), pp. 10–11.
46
TOP, vol. 12, pp. 31–2, 87; ‘Viswamitra’, ‘Monckton and Mountbatten’, Swatantra, 15 May 1948.
47
Coupland, quoted in V. B. Kulkarni, K. M. Munshi (New Delhi: Publications Division, 1983), p. 117; Patel,quoted in Munshi, End of an Era, p. 1.
48
Lucien D. Benichou, From Autocracy to Integration: Political Developments in Hyderabad State (1938–1948) (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2000), esp. chapter 5.
49
Amit Kumar Gupta, The Agrarian Drama: The Leftists and the Rural Poor in India, 1934–51 (New Delhi: Manohar, 1996), pp. 291–317, 412–22 etc.
50
See Swami Ramananda Tirtha, Memoirs of Hyderabad Freedom Struggle (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1967), pp. 181–2.
51
Benichou, From Autocracy to Integration, p. 178.
52
See TOP, vol. 12, pp. 613–15.
53
Benichou, From Autocracy to Integration, pp. 230, 235; ‘Viswamitra’, ‘Monckton and Mountbatten’.
54
See TOP, vol. 12, p. 121.
55
Benichou, From Autocracy to Integration, pp. 208–10.
56
‘Conflict in Hyderabad’, The Times, April 1948, clipping in Theodore Tasker Papers, Mss Eur D798/30–36, OIOC.
57
Wilfrid Russell, Indian Summer (Bombay: Thacker and Co., 1951), p. 210.
58
C. H. V. Pathy, ‘A Close-up of Syed Kasim Razvi’, Swatantra, 29 May 1948.
59
Avivid account of the society and politics of Hyderabad, c. 1947–8, is contained in Asokamitran’s novel The Eighteenth Parallel, translated from the Tamil by Gomathi Narayanan (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1993).
60
O. V. Ranga Rao, ‘Exodus of C. P. Muslims to Hyderabad’, Swatantra, 11 October 1947; Lanka Sundaram, ‘Nizam’s Acts of War and India’s Duty’, Swatantra, 1 November 1947.
61
S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. 2: 1947–1956 (London: Cape, 1979), pp. 40–1; SPC, vol. 5, pp. 236–9; SPC, vol. 7, pp. 150–1, 186–7, 194 etc.
62
See Mirza Ismail, My Public Life: Recollections and Reflections (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1954), pp. 105–28.
63
Quoted in Munshi, End of an Era, p. 176.
64
Ibid., pp. 230–1; Gandhi, Patel, pp. 482–3; Benichou, From Autocracy to Integration, pp. 236–7.
65
Sri Prakasa, Pakistan: Birth and Early Days (Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1965), p. 122.
66
Pattabhi Sitaramayya, ‘The Hyderabad Tangle’, Swatantra,12 June 1948.
67
Abbas, ‘Three Days in Hyderabad’, Swatantra, 24 June 1950.
68
P. J. Griffiths, ‘India and the Future’, The Nineteenth Century, August 1947.
69
See editorial in the Economic Weekly, 8 January 1955.
70
Democracy on the March (New Delhi: Publications Division, 1950), pp. 1, 9–10etc.
71
Menon, Integration of the Indian States, p. 493.
4. A VALLEY BLOODY AND BEAUTIFUL
1
Foran overview, see Alastair Lamb, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, 1846–1990 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1992).
2
Karan Singh, Autobiography, revised edn (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 18–19.
3
Quotedin Ajit Bhattacharjea, Kashmir: The Wounded Valley (New Delhi: UBS, 1994), p. 67.
4
V. K. Chinnammalu Amma, ‘Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah’, Swatantra, 22 May 1948; Trilok Nath Moza, ‘Sher-i-Kashmir Sheikh Abdullah’, Swatantra, 5 June 1948.
5
These paragraphs on Kashmir politics in the 1930s and 1940s draw largely from Bhattacharjea, Kashmir, pp. 65–76, and Lamb, Kashmir, pp. 89–95.
6
Malika Pukhraj, Song Sung True: A Memoir, ed. And trans. Saleem Kidwai (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 2003), pp. 200–1.
7
S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. 1: 1889–1947 (London: Cape, 1975), pp. 322–3.
8
SPC, vol. 1, pp. 13–15.
9
TOP, vol. 9, p. 71.
10
SPC, vol. 1, pp. 29–30; Hasan Zaheer, The Times and Trials of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy, 1951: the First Coup Attempt in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 72–3.
11
Mountbatten to Sir Akbar Hydari(governor of Assam), 17 June 1947, Mountbatten Papers, Mss Eur F200/13, OIOC.
12
See Ramchandra Kak’s note, ‘Jammu and Kashmir in 1946–47’, written in 1960 as a retrospective defence of the idea of independence. Copy in R. Powell Papers, Mss Eur D862, OIOC.
13
TOP, vol. 11, p. 592.
14
TOP, vol. 12, pp. 3–5, 368.
15
D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 2nd edn (1963; reprint New Delhi: Publications Division, 1990), vol. 8, pp. 67–8.
16
Michael Brecher, The Struggle for Kashmir (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), pp. 23–4.
17
Rajmohan Gandhi, Patel: A Life (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Press, 1991), p. 439.
18
SPC, vol. 1, pp. 45–7.
19
See Josef Korbel, Danger in Kashmir, 2nd edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 70–1.
20
SPC, vol. 1, pp. 56, 62.
21
Quoted in Prem Shankar Jha, Kashmir, 1947: Rival Versions of History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 32–3.
22
R. B. Batra, quoted in Sisir Kumar Gupta, Kashmir: A Study in India–Pakistan Relations (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1966), p. 106.
23
Lamb’s Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy is the best case for Pakistan; Jha’s Kashmir, 1947 an answer from the Indian point of view.
24
see Richard Symons, In the Margins of Independence: A Relief Worker in India and Pakistan, 1942-1949 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 78–9.
25
This and the next few paragraphs are based on Lamb, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, pp. 122–34; Brecher, Struggle for Kashmir, pp. 25–33; Gupta, Kashmir, pp. 110–15; Zaheer, Rawalpindi Conspiracy, pp. 82–7, 94–6 etc.
26
Lt. Gen. L. P. Sen, Slender was the Thread: Kashmir Confrontation, 1947–48 (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1969), pp. 34–8.
27
Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 348.
28
Untitled typescript dated 3November 1947 by Major J. E. Thomson, Powell Papers, Mss Eur D862, OIOC; extracts from report in Daily Express, 11 November 1947, in White Paper on Jammu and Kashmir (New Delhi: Government of India, 1948), pp. 24–5.
29
Lamb, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, p. 143.
30
Amar Devi Gupta, ‘A 1947 Tragedy of Jammu and Kashmir State: The Cleansing of Mirpur’, Mss Eur C705, OIOC.
31
Lord Birdwood, ‘Kashmir’, International Affairs, July 1952.
32
See the eyewitness accounts reproduced in Dewan Ram Prakash, Fight for Kashmir (New Delhi: Tagore Memorial Publications, 1948), pp. 34–9.
33
This account is based on V. P. Menon, Integration of the Indian States (1956; reprint Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1997), pp. 397–400; Gandhi, Patel, pp. 442–4. However, Prem Shankar Jha (Kashmir, 1947, pp. 63–4) claims that the Instrument of Accession was signed by Maharaja Hari Singh in Srinagar on the night of the 25th/26th itself, that is before he fled to Jammu.
34
S. N. Prasad and Dharm Pal, History of Operations in Jammu and Kashmir (1947–48) (New Delhi: Ministry of Defence, 1987), pp. 28f., 379.
35
Major L. E. R. B. Ferris, quoted in Lt. Col. Maurice Cohen, Thunder over Kashmir (1955; reprint Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1994), pp. 3–4.
36
Nehru to Vijayalakshmi Pandit, 28 October 1947, Vijayalakshmi Pandit Papers, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi (hereafter NMML).
As told by the veteran Punjab politician Khizr Hyat Tiwana to the ex-Punjab civil servant Malcolm Darling. See diary note of 9 January 1948, Box 60, Darling Papers, CSAS.
38
Baroo, ‘Kashmir Interlude’, Swatantra, 29 November 1947.
39
Bhattacharjea, Kashmir, pp. x–xii.
40
Lord Mountbatten, ‘Note of a Discussion with Mr Jinnah in the presence of Lord Ismay at Government House, Lahore, on 1 November 1947’, in SPC, vol. 1, pp. 73–81.
41
Prasad and Pal, History of Operations, pp. 39–40.
42
Ibid., p. 60; Sen, Slender was the Thread, pp. 111–12.
43
Nehru to Hari Singh, 13 November 1947, in S. Gopal, general ed., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru: Second Series (New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Fund,1984–), hereafter SWJN2, vol. 5, pp. 324–7.
44
CWMG, vol. 90, pp. 122–3.
45
C. Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy in Kashmir, 1947–8 (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2002), p. 78.
46
Nehru to Hari Singh, 1 December 1947, in SPC, vol. 1, pp. 100–6.
47
H. V. Hodson, The Great Divide: Britain-India-Pakistan (London: Hutchinson, 1969), pp. 466–7; Lamb, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, pp. 164–5.
48
Brecher, Struggle for Kashmir, pp. 55–75; Reports of the United Nations Special Commission for India and Pakistan, June 1948 to December 1949 (New Delhi: Ministry of External Affairs, 1950), pp. 53f., 281f.
49
Josef Korbel, Danger in Kashmir (1954; revised edition Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 109.
50
S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. 2: 1947–1956 (London: Cape, 1979), pp. 26–7; Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy, pp. 17, 111, 134. Cf. also Rajbans Krishen, Kashmir and the Conspiracy against Peace (Bombay: People’s Publishing House, 1951).
51
H. V. Hodson to Philip Noel-Baker, 2 March 1948, copy in Short Papers, Mss Eur F189/1, OIOC.
52
See Hodson, The Great Divide, pp. 469–70.
53
Untitled note by Major General T. W. Rees, Rees Papers, Mss Eur F274/72, OIOC.
54
Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy, pp. 144–51,167–8, 177–83.
55
Air Chief Marshal P. C. Lal, My Years with the IAF (New Delhi: Lancer International, 1987), pp. 58–67.
India After Gandhi Page 99