Partition

by Barney White-Spunner

  Christie reckoned that in the years immediately after independence, the number of British in India, excepting the army, rose, which is, in itself, an interesting comment on how thinly the Raj had been spread throughout its time in India and particularly in its final years. The new people were mostly commercial or people like him who were happy to adapt. Others found their changed circumstances more difficult. Norval Mitchell was told he was to be replaced as chief secretary in West Punjab by Dudley de la Fargue, the officer who had spoken so disloyally about Sir Olaf Caroe and his demand for the plebiscite on the Frontier. Mitchell had only been standing in for de la Fargue, so this was not altogether surprising, but it was quite odd given that de la Fargue’s outspoken support of Dr Khan Sahib had been in opposition to the League. Jinnah had, however, offered Mitchell another post, carrying the same salary and conditions. It was an attractive offer, particularly given that he faced an uncertain future with four young children, but he refused. ‘I was not’, he said, ‘for one moment tempted.’ His reasons were various but mostly because he felt that ‘the opportunity of service that had been so inspiring in 1929 was no longer available’. He had, he reflected, spent the last few years being responsible for suppressing unrest, something he was afraid would continue. It had been ‘distasteful and exhausting work’. Instead he resigned, doing what all returning British officials and soldiers did when their ships left Bombay, throwing his solar topee, that instantly recognisable badge of the Raj, over the stern of the ship. He did not feel ‘grief-stricken’, but more numb and ‘tried to look forward cheerfully to an ill-defined future’. Once his ship was out of sight of land he immersed himself in books on sheep farming. For ten years he occupied himself in the Scottish borders before returning to colonial service in Northern Rhodesia as it became Zambia.20

  For some Indian communities the departure of the few British who remained was sad. In Jodhpur they were sorry, however much they felt betrayed by the Raj, to say farewell to

  Loch of the Land Revenue Service, Lowrie of the Forestry, Barr of the Judiciary, Beatson of the Lancers, Cocks of the Police, Joscelyne and Home of the Railways, Miss Massey of the First Girls School, Edgar of the Public Works, and those great and good men, the Residents Powlett, Windham, Hewson. Long after Dufferin, Elgin and Curzon, Minto and Hardinge, Irwin and Willingdon, Linlithgow and Mountbatten have been forgotten, these are the ‘sahibs’ Marwar [the royal house of Jodhpur] will remember.21

  For many Indians the end of British rule was, once the celebrations were over, something of a non-event. ‘One hundred and fifty years would wash off in the first one hundred and fifty minutes’, thought Inder Malhotra. In 1954 he went, as a journalist, on a goodwill cruise with the Indian Navy. They called at Port Swettenham in Malaya (now Port Klang in Malaysia) where a dance had been arranged. The Indian sailors happily danced with British girls in a way that seemed completely natural but Malhotra noticed the Malays watching from the sidelines uncomfortably. Indians had, he thought, completely excised any notion of the British being different but in countries like Malaya the old inhibitions remained. In 1961 he was walking his niece along the seafront in Bombay. They paused at the statue of King George V under the India Gate. His niece asked him why there was a statue of a foreign king in India. Malhotra explained. His niece burst out laughing and told him he was making it all up.22 One poignant reminder for Malhotra came when he was covering an official trip to Pakistan in 1950. The party had stopped at a local station. On the platform he saw one of those eleven Muslim refugees whose lives his father had saved on Independence Day by smuggling them onto a Pakistan-bound train.

  But there was pain to come. Kushwant Singh noted, phlegmatically, that after the high of independence, when he had celebrated so enthusiastically in Delhi, and thought that India ‘the land of Gandhi’ would show the world, ‘it was only later that the disillusionment set in – that we realised we were just like everyone else’.23 A violent and shocking example of that disillusionment occurred on 30 January 1948. Mahatma Gandhi, supported as usual on the shoulders of two female disciples, hobbled out of Birla House in New Delhi, where he was living, to take his daily prayer meeting. Gandhi made full use of Birla’s generosity, causing the industrialist to quip one day, ‘Have you any idea what it costs to keep you in the poverty to which you are accustomed?’ On 12 January Gandhi had started another fast, declaring that he would continue until Hindu–Muslim unity had been restored. He laid down seven conditions that must be fulfilled, mostly concerning the safety of Muslims and their property in Delhi, before he would agree to eat again. After initially greeting his latest intervention with some irritation, and Patel muttering that the only way to improve Hindu–Muslim relations was to remove every Muslim from East Punjab and every non-Muslim from West Punjab, the government formed a committee under Congress President Rajendra Prasad to put his conditions into effect. On 20 January a young extreme Hindu activist threw a bomb at Gandhi as he conducted his prayers. It caused no damage and the Mahatma was unperturbed but as he climbed the steps to his prayer platform on 30 January a Hindu extremist called Nathuram Godse shot him three times in the chest with a revolver at almost point-blank range.

  Thirteen days of state mourning were declared. Tributes were paid from across the world. ‘Nearly all from India bore tribute to his non-communal outlook and his equal love for the Muslims. The only one of those which in any way struck a jarring note was Mr. Jinnah’s – who referred to Mahatma Gandhi as “one of the greatest men produced by the Hindu community and a leader who commanded their universal confidence and respect”.’24 There was, though, general relief that his assassin was a Hindu and not a Muslim. Had he been, then it would have opened up ‘a ghastly prospect; next day rivers of blood would flow in India and Pakistan’.25 In fact the investigation into Gandhi’s assassination revealed a widespread plot, masterminded by cells of the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, to kill more members of the government who were, they felt, not taking a strong enough Hindu and Indian nationalist line. On 3 February the RSS was declared illegal and many of its members arrested. The Hindu Mahasabha went into voluntary suspension. At the same time the leaders of the two extreme Muslim organisations, the League National Guards and the Khaksars, were rounded up as well.

  Gandhi, always a Hindu at heart however hybrid his various religious beliefs, was cremated the next day, attended by a crowd of over a million people. Nehru lit the funeral pyre. Mountbatten attended and sat cross-legged on the ground in the front row. Churchill was appalled that the representative of the ex-King-Emperor should be so seen in public; Mountbatten explained that if he hadn’t he would have been pushed into the flames by the weight of the crowd pushing forward.

  One of the effects of Gandhi’s assassination was to cause a temporary improvement in relations between Nehru and Sardar Patel, which had been getting progressively worse. Christie had been amused to hear the audience at a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in Delhi start muttering during the quarrel scene between Caesar and Cassius ‘Where is Jawaharlal? Is Sardarji [the familiar name for Patel] here?’26 The two leaders had started to make speeches on the same issue at the same time ‘without the least reference to each other’.27 Gandhi had been disturbed, sensing a serious split in Congress at a time when India faced so many critical issues; some believed his last fast had been an attempt to force a reconciliation. Patel had been to see him the day he was killed, asking for his guidance. Should he resign or stay on? Gandhi urged him to stay. Patel remained hugely influential, as deputy prime minister, minister for home affairs and commander-in-chief of the armed forces until 1950 when his weak heart finally got the better of him. He and Nehru continued to spar, over the integration of the states – Nehru felt he did not consult the wider government fully – on Kashmir and Hyderabad, and later over the integration of the remaining Portuguese outpost of Goa, but they avoided an open split. With Patel went V. P. Menon; he had been the most invaluable servant to two masters, the Raj and Patel. Once they had both gone he w
as sidelined and went into retirement. At least it meant he had time to write his memoirs.

  Jinnah was moved from Karachi to a cottage in the hills at Ziarat, above Quetta, in June 1948. He had endured a demanding year, touring East Bengal and the North West Frontier but his health was now giving out. From Ziarat he was moved down to Quetta in August and then back to Government House in Karachi where he died on 11 September. He was buried the next day, the crowds at his funeral rivalling those who attended Gandhi’s cremation. Khwaja Nazimuddin, premier of East Bengal, was selected to take over from him as governor general, a wise choice given what was seen as a widening gulf between the two halves of the country. One of the main issues facing Nazimuddin and Liaquat, apart from their problems with India, was money. There had been a long-standing row with India over what share of India’s pre-partition cash reserves would be transferred. In August these had amounted to 400 crore rupees, a crore being 10 million rupees, so about £300 million. Pakistan was allocated 75 crore rupees; 20 crore rupees was paid immediately with the balance of 55 crore to follow. During the Kashmir dispute India decided to withhold this second payment and it had taken Gandhi’s intervention with Patel, at Mountbatten’s suggestion, to release it. Even so Pakistan was very short of cash. By March 1948 they were running a deficit of 24.3 crore rupees and had to raise an emergency loan to which the country responded very positively, with women even pawning their jewellery and clothes. By 1948 things were more under control and the next two budgets even produced a small surplus but there was little for nation-building in a country that had virtually no government facilities.28 Pakistan established a State Bank in July 1948 and the Pakistani rupee initially maintained parity with its Indian counterpart, both trading at the same rate against sterling. However, in 1949, when sterling was devalued against the US dollar, India followed suit but Pakistan decided not to and the two rupee currencies began to drift apart.

  Neither was the passage of democracy in Pakistan straightforward. Liaquat was assassinated while he was giving a speech in Rawalpindi in 1951 by an Afghan but the motive for his murder is obscure. Nazimuddin then took over as prime minister, handing over as governor general to Malik Ghulam Mohammad, the finance minister. Unrest was meanwhile growing in East Bengal. This was partly nationalist, with East Bengalis protesting about the use of Urdu as the official language but largely because they felt ignored by Karachi. Increasingly the key government jobs were being filled by West Pakistanis and Bengalis saw themselves becoming the poor relations of a government that put the interests of the western provinces first. At the same time the population of East Bengal was growing fast so that it was beginning to dwarf the west. In 1955, in an attempt to answer East Bengal’s increasingly violent demands for better representation, the country was divided into West Pakistan and East Pakistan, which now had a greater degree of self-government. Suhrawardy, who had declared his undying loyalty to India in 1947, became prime minister of Pakistan but only lasted until 1957.

  These challenges proved too much for the young democracy. In 1958 General Iskander Mirza, in the face of serious unrest in both halves of the country, declared martial law. His successor was General Ayub Khan, Mohindar Singh’s old colleague from Sandhurst, and Gracey’s successor as chief of the army staff. He ruled the country for the next ten years during which Pakistan fought its first, or second if you count Kashmir, war with India. This started in August 1965 over what were portrayed as Pakistani attempts to start an insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir. It was a violent conventional struggle, with mass armoured forces engaged in the biggest tank battle since the Second World War. It ended in stalemate, with India claiming to have the upper hand but little territorial change; casualties were roughly equal despite each army making contradictory claims. Harbakhsh Singh, now a lieutenant general, led India’s Western Command, retaking the Haji Pir Pass over which he had so reluctantly led his 1st Sikhs in 1947.

  Ayub Khan faced strong opposition. Early in his term Suhrawardy had tried to make a comeback before being exiled. Despite the war, in 1969 Ayub Khan still managed to hand over to another general, Yahya Khan. In November 1970 a terrible cyclone hit East Pakistan, causing widespread flooding, killing up to a quarter of a million people, and sending a further flood of refugees into India. The response of Yahya Khan’s government was thought to be inadequate, he himself spending only one day in the country en route to China and, in a replay of the events of 1942–3, failing to send food supplies. In December he was forced to agree to elections. These were won with an overwhelming majority by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Aswami League in the East and with a clear majority by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s People’s Party in the West. Rahman, harking back to 1947, now demanded that the central government in Karachi should control only defence, foreign affairs and communications, leaving all other matters to Dacca but Yahya Khan refused. On 25 March 1971 he sent the Pakistan Army, which had been gradually reinforced so it was around sixty thousand, into Dacca to suppress the Aswami League.

  The resulting civil war, which was fought during the summer and autumn of 1971, was bloody and widespread, with accusations of atrocities on both sides. It led to a further mass exodus to West Bengal, estimated to have been several million people who placed an unacceptable strain on an economy already struggling to absorb earlier migrations. India initially stood back but then began to start training East Pakistani ‘freedom fighters’. Pakistan took this as a hostile act and in December 1971 mounted a surprise attack on India from the west. India countered this and immediately invaded East Pakistan. It was to prove a one-sided contest. Pakistani forces in the East surrendered on 16 December 1971 after just twelve days and Bangladesh was born with Rahman as its first head of state. The military, discredited, were forced out in West Pakistan, which became just Pakistan, where Bhutto’s People’s Party formed a new government.

  The story of these difficult decades showed the near impossibility of making Pakistan work as a country of two halves separated by a thousand miles, by race, by language, by affinity and united only by religion. They also showed that Burrows’ prediction in April 1947 was correct and that East Bengal would not be economically viable nor able to feed itself at least under the semi-colonial administration of West Pakistan. Bangladesh’s early years as a nation were equally difficult. Severe flooding along the Brahmaputra in 1974 was blamed for the subsequent famine that lasted from January 1974 until January 1975. By the summer of 1974 the price of rice had doubled in the worst affected areas, mostly higher up the river. In Rangpur, 100,000 died and there were significant casualties in Mymensingh and Sylhet. The Bangladeshi government put the subsequent deaths at 27,000; most independent estimates put them at nearer the one million mark. Again debates raged as to whether there was an actual shortage of food or whether the problem was more one of management and distribution. Again the West, in this case the United States, was criticised for withholding food supplies, trying to exert political pressure on Bangladesh not to trade with Cuba.29 Economic restructuring after 1975 brought about a gradual change so that, with its well-developed garment industry and more productive agriculture, in 2016 Bangladesh recorded its highest-ever growth rate. East Bengal at least has a happier ending, to date, than it had birth.

  Within twenty-five years of partition, India and Pakistan, two states with a common heritage that in June 1947 were intended to work within a shared defence structure, had been engaged in three major conflicts. Within fifty years both countries had acquired nuclear weapons. Their rivalry was reflected in their international affiliations. Nehru, a socialist who was always impressed by Russia, looked increasingly to Moscow. Pakistan, in contrast, looked to Washington and China; Nehru was irritated at what he saw as unjustified American support for Pakistan. Both countries, badly in need of money to fund development and education, spent excessively on their armies. Nehru, always suspicious of the military, kept his generals well away from power. Very soon after independence he slashed their salaries and privileges. Senior Indian officers served for
short periods and were then replaced so they could not build up any individual power base. The three services were kept apart, with a weak central defence staff. If Indian politicians were firmly in charge of the military, in Pakistan the opposite happened. Forged in the tragedy of the Punjab and in Kashmir, Pakistan relied on its army from its very beginning. It was one of the few functioning organisations in the new nation and one which, with Jinnah gone, represented its sense of nationhood. It was, as in Israel, part of the fabric of what the new country was. The subsequent military governments have come from that tradition.

  There has been much ink spilt over who was to blame for partition and debate about whether it could have been avoided. It is important first to accept that the events of August to November 1947 were a tragedy, a terrible tragedy, not just in bloodshed and human misery but in their consequences. Were they avoidable and who was responsible for them? Some historians will argue it is Britain’s fault for trying to govern India in the first place, rather than just establishing a trading partnership. There is an obvious truth in that but it is not necessarily a helpful debate when confronted with the circumstances of 1947. However, there is a strong case for arguing that Britain stayed in India well past the time when it was clear that its presence benefited neither the British nor Indians.

  The critical year was 1919. India had made an extraordinarily generous contribution to the British war effort in the First World War, both in the number of men who volunteered and in money. There had been a genuine expectation that after the war she would receive the same sort of self-government as had already been given to Canada, as early as 1861, to South Africa in 1872 and to Australia in 1900, which is sometimes referred to as Dominion status although technically that did not exist until 1931. What it would have meant, in effect, is that India would have stayed as a united nation in the Commonwealth, with a British governor general and a British hand, albeit a light one, in defence and foreign policy but essentially self-governing. Instead the British stayed put. The Rowlatt Acts insulted Indians, Dyer committed his atrocity in Amritsar, the trading advantages declined, the Muslim League grew apart from Congress and the energy started to go out of the Raj, but still Britain would not compromise. It is difficult not to see a racist element in this; colonies with a white business and governing class were granted self-governing status but Indians were not felt to be ready. The early 1920s are a dark and muddled time for Britain. The losses of the First World War seem to have blighted the judgement of a generation who, despite the primacy of domestic interests, continued to treat both Ireland and India in a way that was not only contrary to what they had been led to expect in 1914 but which was to work directly counter to British interests. It was almost as if George III was once again confronting the American colonies rather than negotiating a common future.