V
On 2 September Nehru had been sworn in as Prime Minister of an interim government, whispering the words ‘Jai Hind’ at the end of his oath to the King Emperor. There were no League nominees among his colleagues, for it continued to remain aloof from a ministry which it imagined to be an instrument of Congress. Wavell, whose powers of perserverance bordered on the miraculous, finally managed to coax Jinnah to join the government on 26 October. Not that this signified a breakthrough; far from it, for the five League ministers saw participation in the Cabinet as a means to pursue the goal of Pakistan. The Cabinet worked in uneasy harness against a background of arguments over procedures as the two factions struggled for future political leverage. There was deadlock too in the quest for a new constitution.
Like the Raj he served, Wavell was wilting. At the end of the year he wondered whether his constitution would continue to withstand the stress of an office which offered nothing but anxiety. ‘The main trouble has been that I have been sleeping badly, waking up too early, to be assailed by doubts, fears and problems, official and private.’ He added: ‘It is a great strain on a small man to do a job which is too big for him, if he feels it too big . . . I am afraid that 1947 may be even more difficult and more of a strain.’69 Nehru too was showing symptoms of mental and physical exhaustion, while Jinnah was suffering from the early stages of terminal cancer, a fact which was kept well hidden and may have stiffened his determination to secure Pakistan within a lifetime which had no more than two years to run.
Early in April, Wavell and his staff had begun contriving a plan that would bring the Raj to an end in March 1948. It finally emerged as Operation Ebb-Tide and, for all its flaws, it offered a means to side-step the political impasse. British administrators and soldiers would undertake a phased withdrawal from India, retiring from south to north. They would leave behind them Hindustan, a state where Hindus were in the majority, and Congress would rule through provincial assemblies. This would leave the British confined to India’s northern and eastern periphery and bring about what was in effect a partition, for this was the area the League claimed as Pakistan. Wavell’s scheme was coldly received by Attlee and the Cabinet. It smacked of defeatism and looked dangerously like an ignominious abdication of responsibility. Moreover, if implemented it would overturn the government’s policy of remaking India as a Commonwealth partner and ally. As the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, pointed out, an evacuation of India in this manner might tempt the Soviet Union to intervene. Even if the Russians did not invade, Wavell’s plan was bound to undermine Britain’s political and strategic position in the Middle and Far East.70 There was not only the psychological impact of Britain in retreat, but the fact that if the evacuation was accompanied by disorders, additional troops would have be drafted in from Germany, Greece, Palestine and Egypt. As in 1919, the imperial battle-line was stretched taut. Auchinleck was ill-disposed towards the scheme, which he believed would do enormous harm to the Indian army’s morale.71
Operation Ebb-Tide was rejected by the Cabinet at the beginning of January 1947. So too was Wavell, whose outlook and actions had been under critical scrutiny for some time. In April 1946, Pethick-Lawrence, while praising the Viceroy’s virtues, warned Attlee that the greatest fore-bearance might become exhausted.72 Certainly Wavell’s feelings towards Gandhi were hardening. Their often testy exchanges left the Viceroy convinced that behind the whimsical, saintly exterior lurked a malevolent Machiavelli. Shortly after the Calcutta massacres, Wavell had been genuinely appalled when Gandhi had remarked that if India wanted a blood bath, it could have it.73 Jinnah also had the same relaxed attitude to other people’s lives, once remarking that Pakistan was worth the sacrifice of ten million Muslims.
In the end it was Wavell’s bluff, honest approach to delicate political negotiations which brought about his downfall. Attlee, Cripps and Pethick-Lawrence feared that this might be the case and were, therefore, susceptible to backstairs Congress pressure for the Viceroy’s removal. During the second half of 1946, covert approaches were made to the three ministers by Congress’s roving representative, Sudhir Ghosh, a young man who had been personal assistant to the managing director of the Tata steelworks. Ghosh probably exaggerated the effect of his intriguing, and Pethick-Lawrence, if not Cripps, found him a vexatious embarrassment.74 Wavell, with characteristic forthrightness, called Ghosh ‘that little rat’ and suspected duplicity among his superiors in London.75 Even without Congress wire-pulling in London, it was clear to Cripps and Attlee that a new man with fresh ideas was needed in Delhi, and on 18 December Attlee asked Mountbatten to become Viceroy. He agreed in the first week of January 1947.
Attlee wrote to Wavell on 31 January, giving him four weeks’ notice to leave India and offering an earldom as a consolation. Wavell accepted his dismissal with a dignified letter, reminding the Prime Minister that it had always been customary for a Viceroy to be given six months’ notice before he was recalled. Not that this counted for much any more; now all that mattered was expediency.
8
Was It Too Quick?:
Dividing and Departing, March – September 1947
I
Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma (‘Dickie’) was forty-six years old when he was appointed India’s last and most controversial Viceroy. He was English-born from German parents: Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Victoria, a daughter of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse. Through her, Mountbatten was a great-grandson of Queen Victoria, a royal connection that he treasured and used whenever it suited him, which was often. Royal blood counted for something in his lifetime, which coincided with the heyday of that imperial monarchy which his grandmother had done so much to create. Proud of his common touch, Mountbatten also expected deference and, like all princelings, was susceptible to flattery. His father had been an able First Sea Lord, but had been forced to resign in 1914 on account of his German blood. A victim of xenophobia, he later Anglicised his surname and was created Marquess of Milford Haven.
Mountbatten’s background, his father’s treatment, his mildly leftish views, egotism and personal flamboyance placed a distance between him and the conservative, reticent British ruling class from which viceroys had traditionally been selected. As events would show, his outlook, values and priorities were far removed from those of the proconsuls who had ruled India for the past hundred years, which may explain why he got on so well with the men they instinctively disliked – Indian professional politicians. They appreciated a shrewd operator who understood the language of power politics and expediency, which was no doubt why those who had served the Raj and commanded its armies looked askance at him, then and later.
Of Mountbatten’s boundless ambition there can be no doubt. Opinion is divided over his talents as a naval commander, strategic planner and as the Viceroy ordered to terminate the Raj. He believed that he had succeeded in all these undertakings in an exemplary manner and said so frequently, convincing himself and, he hoped, posterity that he was a truly great and heroic figure. In constructing his own legend, Mountbatten was aware that much of what he had done was open to reproof, and he went to considerable lengths to forestall his critics. In one highly revealing episode he asked Sir Evan Jenkins, the last Governor of the Punjab, not to have any dealings with Leonard Mosley, who was then engaged in a book on the last days of the Raj. Mountbatten’s only motive could have been a fear that Jenkins might reveal details of a piece of illicit viceregal legerdemain during the drawing of the border between India and Pakistan. In the warning to Jenkins, Mountbatten hinted at arm-twisting elsewhere when he claimed that Longman had already assured him they would not publish Mosley’s book on the grounds that it was hostile. On the other hand, Mountbatten was keen for Jenkins to see the historian John Terraine, who was then gathering material for a twelve-part television documentary on the Viceroy’s career. He was ‘a real man of honour and would not let you down’, and, according to Mountbatten, proof of his integrity could be found in his studies of Field Mars
hal Lord Haig and British strategy on the Western Front.1 Both were highly sympathetic to their subjects and evidence of their author’s ability to defend a seemingly untenable position. The posthumous television vindication appeared after Mountbatten’s assassination by the IRA in August l979. As a case for the defence it was impaired by its protagonist’s glib self-righteousness.
In the light of his extraordinary efforts to preserve and, wherever possible, add lustre to his reputation, Mountbatten deserves compassion rather than condemnation. Those who tamper with history are usually frightened by it, and, for all his colossal vanity, the Viceroy may have been conscious that on occasions his judgement had been mistaken and his achievements exaggerated, not least by himself. ‘I am glad to tell you that I was right from the point of view of history,’ he told The Times on 2 January 1969. He predicted that his grandchildren would say: ‘Great grandpa wasn’t such a bloody fool after all. He was right and all the others who criticised him were wrong.’ There were many variations on this theme of rectitude; so many, in fact, as to leave listeners wondering whether they were uttered as an antidote to interior doubts rather than as affirmations of unshakeable self-confidence.
Speculation along these lines is hard to sustain, for Mountbatten was essentially a man of action rather than thought. In India he proceeded on the assumption that whenever faced with a crisis it was always better to do something rather than wait and see. Considered procrastination would have been a difficult alternative for a Viceroy whose masters had told him to stick to their timetable. To deviate from instructions would have been risky for an ambitious man, all too aware of what had happened when his predecessor had fallen out with the government. It was also important to be seen in action. Mountbatten was the first Viceroy to appoint a press attaché, Alan Campbell-Johnson, whose job it was to make sure that the Raj ended with a display of favourable publicity. Newsreel cameramen were shepherded to where they could obtain the best shots of the Viceroy and Vicereine, both of whom were always obliging in such matters. Campbell-Johnson was delighted when Gandhi met the couple and placed his hand on Lady Mountbatten’s shoulder, providing a gesture of ‘spontaneous friendship’ for the press photographers.2
Such informality added to the carefully contrived impression of the new Viceroy as a gust of fresh air blowing through the fusty corridors of power. Not that Mountbatten shunned the theatre of viceregal power, for he had a Ruritanian taste for uniforms and never missed a chance to appear in them, adorned with the stars and ribbons of the various orders that came the way of minor royalty. Thus arrayed, he formally took over from Wavell in an unprecedented ceremony at the viceregal palace. Incoming and outgoing viceroys had hitherto never met, and by ignoring this custom Mountbatten compounded Attlee’s humiliation of Wavell, or so many believed.
The new Viceroy took very seriously the Prime Minister’s wish that the British should leave India in a spirit of goodwill. From the moment of his arrival in Delhi on 22 March, he went out of his way to win the hearts of India’s leaders in what turned out to be a highly effective charm offensive. Beguiling politicians with whom he had to make some hard bargains made sense if one assumed, as Mountbatten clearly did, that in an atmosphere of affability old differences and intransigence might miraculously evaporate. The magic did not work for Jinnah, who was not a man to be won over by breezy ward-room good humour or soft words. Even if he had been, it is hard to imagine that Mountbatten could ever have persuaded him that he was an even-handed Viceroy.
The Mountbattens inclined to the left, and were seen by Muslims as pro-Congress. Lord Casey (Governor of Bengal, 1944–46) found Lady Mountbatten ‘startlingly left-wing’ when they met at a dinner party in February 1945.3 Her husband was a close confidant of the Labour MP, Tom Driberg, whom he used both as a source of political inside information and a secret contact with the press and the Labour Left. Driberg surmised that his friend was a homosexual like himself, although it is unclear on what grounds.4 The deviant MP was one of a wide circle of socialist luminaries, including Sir Stafford Cripps and Khrisna Menon, whom the Viceroy consulted before he left for India. Cripps was an admirer and offered his services on Mountbatten’s staff.5 Any doubts which Jinnah or his followers may have had as to where the Mountbattens’ sympathies lay were soon dissipated: within a fortnight of their arrival, the pair had struck up cordial and close relations with Nehru, Gandhi and other leading Congressmen. By contrast, the Viceroy’s first interview with Jinnah on 5 April was frosty, and set the tone for its successors. Mountbatten set great store by his magnetic personality, and the Quaid’s rebuff peeved him. His response was to refer to Jinnah as an ‘evil genius’, a ‘psychopathic case’, a ‘lunatic’ and plain ‘bastard’. This was folly at a time when security at the top levels of government had all but ceased to exist as Indian civil servants shed old loyalties and acquired new. As a result, there were plenty of eavesdroppers glad to divulge secret information to Indian politicians.6
The Viceroy’s claims to political detachment were further compromised by the crass misconduct of his wife. Edwina Mountbatten was a jejune socialite with a record for infidelity which her husband appears to have overlooked. Whether in Singapore, where they first met in March 1946, or when they became re-acquainted in India, the Vicereine became infatuated with Nehru. This was a disastrous intrusion of private passion into public life, since their flirtations were observed and commented upon, unfavourably by Muslims. One, Auchinleck’s military secretary, Shahid Hamid, remarked in his diary for 31 March: ‘. . . according to [V. P.] Menon, Nehru’s relationship with Lady Mountbatten is sufficiently close to have raised many eyebrows’. They remained arched for the next few months, although to judge from what is known of the love letters that passed between them, her feelings for the older, wiser widower were those of schoolgirl with a crush. What was, in every sense, a trivial affair added to Muslim fears that her husband was in Congress’s pocket.7
As far as the Muslim League was concerned, Mountbatten’s well-intentioned policy of cultivating the friendship of the men with whom he had to bargain had failed. It did, however, result in him being the first Viceroy to enjoy warm relations with the Congress leadership. They were undoubtedly drawn towards him in the belief that the British government had granted him complete freedom of action as a power-broker. This was not so, although Mountbatten often gave the contrary impression. On 27 March, when they were dining together, he told Lieutenant-General Sir Reginald Savory, the Adjutant-General of the Indian army, that he had ‘practically carte blanche’ to settle all India’s outstanding problems.8 On other occasions the Viceroy claimed that he possessed ‘plenipotentiary powers’ and could do as he wished.9
The real master of events, Attlee, employed an analogy from his beloved cricket to describe the Viceroy’s position. ‘I put you in to bat on a very sticky wicket to pull the game out of the fire,’ he told Mountbatten on 17 July, when it appeared that he was about to save the match.10 The Prime Minister was the captain and the Viceroy his star batsman, under orders to rescue the innings before light failed. To prevent his player from stonewalling, Attlee had publicly announced on 20 February that the British would leave India by 30 June 1948, a deadline which was intended to concentrate the minds of Congress and the League and force them to agree terms. An accord between the two was still thought possible, in spite of past experience of Jinnah’s interior resolve and the mentality of his followers. If, after independence, India chose to join what was still an all-white Commonwealth, so much the better, although there were official fears that it might prove an unco-operative, possibly disruptive member. In the case of the Congress and the League remaining at loggerheads, then the Prime Minister declared that Britain would deliver power to existing central and provincial governments, or ‘in such other way as may seem most reasonable and in the best interests of the Indian people’. The alternative to conciliation was a solution imposed from above.
To help him carry out Attlee’s mandate, Mountbatten was given a strong team o
f supporting players. The anchor man was General Lord (‘Pug’) Ismay, his chief of staff who, for the past six years, had been chief of staff at the Ministry of Defence, where he had been Churchill’s right-hand man. He represented the British chiefs of staff, whose overriding concern was for India to be retained within the Commonwealth as a link in a strategic chain of allies and bases which stretched from Gibraltar through the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and the Far East. This had always been the traditional role of India; it had underpinned British pretensions in Asia and the Middle East and, indeed, Britain’s claim to be a world power. Old shibboleths died lingering deaths and, even in 1947, when Britain was staying afloat on American loans, there were those who still thought in terms which would have been recognised by Victorian and Edwardian statesmen and strategists. The chiefs of staff, together with Ernest Bevin, bridged the gap between men of the Palmerstonian mould and the cold warriors of the second half of the twentieth century. They imagined that an armed confrontation with the Soviet Union was inevitable and likely to be prolonged. If this was so, then Indian co-operation was vital for the defence of Commonwealth communications and the oilfields of Iraq and Persia. Auchinleck concurred; in May 1946 he had suggested that if Pakistan became a reality it would need a British garrison to defend it against Afghan and maybe Russian encroachments.11 At this time Attlee still had an open mind about the Russian threat and, despite objections from the chiefs of staff, was not prepared to press independent India too far on the matter of an alliance.12
II
Mountbatten’s first four weeks in India were spent listening to the opinions of Indian ministers, politicians and his staff. What he heard and saw convinced him that partition was unavoidable and that it was best undertaken sooner rather later. This was not what Attlee had wanted and was, in a way, a betrayal of all that the Raj had achieved in creating a united India under a single government. The point was made by Mountbatten when he broadcast to the Indian people on the evening of 3 June, after the partition of India had been announced:
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