Another recipient of information about the future of Firozpur was the Maharaja of Bikaner, who wired Mountbatten on 10 August to protest against a threat to his state’s life-line. He asked the Viceroy to give an interview to his diwan and Kanwan Sain, his chief engineer, who would, presumably, explain the technicalities. Years afterwards, Sain claimed that the meeting took place, but no record of it has survived among the official papers. All that remains are messages to Nehru and the maharaja in which Mountbatten insisted he had no power to intervene.64 He said the same to Liaquat Ali Khan who, on 11 August, had also got wind of the proposals for the disposal of East Punjab’s water supplies.65
The truth was that for all his denials, Mountbatten was meddling in the Commission’s business. On 9 August, one of his private secretaries, Walter Christie, noted in his diary that the Viceroy had to be restrained from interfering with the territorial award and was overstepping the limits of his authority.66 Rumours to this effect also reached Shamid Hamid.67 In the meantime, Jenkins had requested a draft of the Commission’s map of the bisected Punjab so that he could deploy troops to forestall the commotions which were bound to occur on either side of the new border. One of the maps was flown to Lahore on 10 August, and it plainly showed the Firozpur and Zehra districts within Pakistan. The following day, Jenkins was instructed by telegram to ‘eliminate the salient’ and thereby place the region inside India.68 Something hugger-mugger had been happening behind the scenes, but what?
This murky business was finally explained in 1992 by Christopher Beaumont, who had been secretary to the Commission. Nehru, it appears, was being kept well abreast of the commissioners’ deliberations, not only by Khosla but also by V. P. Ayer, an Indian civil servant attached to the Commission. Forewarned, he was able to induce Mountbatten to exert pressure on Radcliffe, first indirectly through Menon and then in person. On the evening of 11 August, Menon tried to see Radcliffe secretly, but was quite correctly turned away by Beaumont. The following day, Radcliffe took luncheon with Ismay and Mountbatten, and the same evening a new map had been prepared for publication with the disputed districts as part of India.69 It was a day after Jenkins had been instructed to disregard the old one, which indicates that Mountbatten felt absolutely confident in his ability to change Radcliffe’s mind.
The snag was that the original chart had been circulated by Jenkins and, after it had been redrawn, Pakistani politicians were furious at what they considered to be a piece of flagrant gerrymandering by Mountbatten.70 This was why, on 2 April 1948, Mountbatten wrote to Ismay to recall the meeting with Radcliffe and, to jog his memory, offered his recollections of what had passed. He also asked the general to burn the letter. According to the former Viceroy, Firozpur and the network of waterways had been briefly mentioned, but nothing was said which might have made Radcliffe reconsider his decision. ‘My recollection of events is very different from yours’ was Ismay’s enigmatic answer.71 From what has emerged since, it is clear that Mountbatten had demanded a radical alteration to Radcliffe’s award in the interest of India and at the insistence of Nehru. His motives were those of expediency and a wish to appease the future rulers of India, who would be the losers if the Firozpur and Zehra districts joined Pakistan. Bikaner had threatened to transfer his state to Pakistan.72 Most importantly, the area represented a bridgehead beyond the Sutlej, from which Pakistani forces could strike southwards towards Delhi in the event of war between the two successor states. Military considerations were believed to have been behind the delivery of the Gurdaspur region to India, for it provided overland access to Kashmir, whose Hindu maharaja had yet to decide whether to take his state and its predominantly Muslim population into India or Pakistan.73 Not surprisingly, the leaders of the fledgling Pakistan believed that the Viceroy had worked tirelessly behind the scenes to pile up disadvantages for a nation which he had once likened to a Nissen hut, a temporary structure which would soon vanish. India, by comparison, he saw as a strong and durable building.
There was a paradox here. In his dealing with the princes, and backstairs intrigue over the splitting of the Punjab, Mountbatten had somehow reverted to that combination of dissembling and coercion which had prevailed in the time of Clive and Hastings. The moral tone which the Raj had acquired and so carefully preserved was one of the last of its trappings to be discarded.
V
Pomp remained to the end. The Viceroy was determined above all things that the Raj should end with a flourish, and he and Campbell-Johnson went to considerable efforts to stage-manage the independence day ceremonies. Whatever was happening elsewhere in India, a dignified façade would be maintained for the newsreel men, photographers and journalists who had flocked to Karachi and Delhi to witness the physical transfer of power. On 13 August the Mountbattens flew to Karachi where, in Campbell-Johnson’s unintentionally revealing words, Government House was decorated ‘just like a Hollywood film set’.74 There were speeches at the official banquet that evening and Jinnah, now Governor-General of the dominion of Pakistan, proposed the King Emperor’s health. His reign had seen, the Quaid observed, a voluntary surrender of imperial power ‘unknown in the whole history of the world’. The next day saw that power formally terminated at a session of the new Pakistani parliament, during which Jinnah reminded his audience of the ancient Muslim tradition of religious tolerance. He then escorted the Mountbattens back to the aerodrome. As the viceregal aircraft flew over the Punjab, large fires could be seen below.75
Astrologers had chosen 15 August as a propitious day for India to begin its independent existence. Just before midnight, Nehru addressed the legislative assembly: ‘Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge . . . At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.’ Indians in Delhi awoke to a day of colourful and cheerful festivities. First came the splendid ceremony in the Durbar Hall of Government House, where Mountbatten appeared in uniform and his wife in gold lamé for his installation as Governor-General. Next were the speeches in the legislative assembly and then the raising and lowering of flags. The crowds were immense, curious and good-natured. The Pathé newsreel described them as ‘wild with joy’ and showed pictures of the Mountbattens walking informally among Indians during the afternoon. The scene illustrated what the commentator called the new Governor-General’s ‘friendly, understanding manner’ which had made Indian independence possible. In the evening there was a huge party in Government House which lasted until the early hours.
The cordiality which had marked independence day evaporated on the 16th, when the decisions of the Boundary Commission were announced. Mountbatten had expected angry reactions, and had postponed the declaration so that the two days of celebrations would not be marred. When the Indian Defence Committee met in Delhi on 16 August and heard accounts of escalating disturbances in the Punjab, the Governor-General wondered whether he had been wrong to defer publication of the awards.76 Auchinleck thought so. After his visit to devastated Lahore on the 14th, the commander-in-chief reported: ‘The delay in announcing the award of the Boundary Commission is having a most disturbing and harmful effect. It is realised of course that the announcement may add fresh fuel to the fire, but lacking an announcement, the wildest rumours are current, and are being spread by mischief-makers of whom there is no lack.’77
Auchinleck’s bleak account of the situation in and around Lahore confirmed the urgent messages sent to Delhi by Jenkins and local commanders during the past three days. All described the spread of terror, hideous atrocities and the impending collapse of order throughout the region.78 Military intelligence had also been recording the build-up of violence, although its files covering the vital period between 11 August and 11 September have somehow been mislaid.79 The Auk was prepared to take immediate and overdue action. On 14 August he ordered two additional brigades – one Indian, the other Pakistani – to reinforce the woefully undermanned Punjab Boundary Force under Major-General Thomas Rees.80
The upsurge in communal violence in the Punjab was not a bolt from the blue. Mountbatten had expected it, although he admitted he was surprised by its scale.81 This is difficult to understand, given the way in which the nature of communal disorders had changed during the past year. Spontaneous eruptions still occurred, triggered either by friction at a village or street level, or by an urge for vengeance. But the upheavals in Rajasthan and the Punjab in the early summer indicated that the killings, rapes and arson had been methodically planned and undertaken by groups which possessed a command structure, modern weaponry and an intelligence network. Just how sophisticated communal terrorism had become was revealed by Gerald Savage of the Punjab CID to the Viceroy, Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan and Patel on 5 August. Savage’s investigations into the growing Sikh nationalist movement had led to the arrest on 4 June of Pritam Singh, an ex-INA man and Japanese-taught saboteur, who had been landed in southern India during the war. Under interrogation, Pritam Singh and other terrorists revealed the existence of an underground organisation which included trained bomb-makers, fire-raisers and railway saboteurs. Firearms and grenades were being purchased or covertly obtained from serving Sikh soldiers and stockpiled. Plans were in hand to derail trains and assassinate Jinnah in Karachi on 15 August. The Raja of Faridkot and Tara Singh, leader of the Sikh Akali party, were implicated in these conspiracies, and Mountbatten wisely instructed Jenkins to arrest all leading Sikh activists before independence day.82 The governor’s nerve failed him, and he decided to leave these men at liberty rather than risk further unrest, although it is hard to see how it could have got worse.83
Revenge against the Muslims was, Savage believed, the motive behind the Sikh plans, although the campaign in terrorism coincided with demands for an independent Sikh state. Adopting the well-tried methods of Congress and the League, Sikhs began a series of mass protests at the beginning of August which appeared to be the first stage of a coup. In the end, the only way in which militant Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus could be brought to heel was by the unwavering use of the iron fist. But who would apply it?
The Punjab crisis came at a time when neither the British nor the Indian army was in a position to take the kind of action that was needed. British troops and RAF squadrons had been scheduled to begin the evacuation of India on 15 August and to withdraw swiftly. Neither Mountbatten nor Nehru wished them to have any operational functions, including policing, between then and their final departure in February 1948.84 Jinnah was against too much haste and would have liked to have kept some units for dealing with tribal unrest on the frontier. Arrangements were made for some detachments to stand by in readiness to protect British residents in Delhi, Karachi, Bombay and Calcutta, if the need arose.85 It is impossible to know whether the presence of British forces would have prevented the communal massacres of August and September. Sir Khizr Hayat Khan, the former Muslim Unionist Prime Minister of the Punjab, believed that they could have done so. British soldiers, he claimed, ‘didn’t know a Muslim from a Hindu, they wouldn’t shoot for fun and whatever they did, they would be trusted’.86 Perhaps so; but the experience of Major J. L. Collard and a handful of unarmed men from the Green Howards suggested otherwise. They were on Delhi station on 8 September when they witnessed a gang of Sikhs killing some Muslims. The major approached one Sikh and asked him: ‘Are you mad? And even if you had suffered in the Punjab, would you, if bitten by a mad dog, bite back?’ Swearing profusely, the Sikh warned him to mind his own business or else he would ‘get it as well’.87 Of course, he might not have been so truculent had the British soldiers been carrying firearms.
As Mountbatten had intended, Indian and Pakistani troops would deal with what, from 15 August, was a problem for their governments. The operational implications of an essentially political decision were never carefully analysed. On 3 June, Listowel, taking his cue from Mountbatten, told the Cabinet’s India committee that there was ‘a considerable risk of further disturbances’ during the process of petition. Six days after, he assured them: ‘The Viceroy has, however, been authorised to take the strongest measures against any outbreak of communal warfare as a result of the recent announcement.’88 In the same vein, Mountbatten promised Dr Maulana Azad that tanks and aircraft would be deployed against troublemakers.89 In the event, willpower exceeded wherewithal; on 24 June the Viceroy confessed to Listowel that during the crucial period before and after partition the Indian army would be unable to render much assistance to the civil power. The majority of units would be in the middle of the complicated process of dividing.90 Slavish adherence to Mountbatten’s time-table meant that when the crisis broke in the Punjab, Auchinleck lacked the reserves to handle it.91
By 15 August, the disorientated and demoralised Punjabi police could no longer be relied upon to keep order; three-quarters were Muslims and, like everyone else trapped in the frontier zones, they were anxious to get themselves and their families across the boundaries into friendly territory. Only the army could maintain the peace. Contrary to some pessimistic analyses, Indian soldiers continued to act dispassionately whenever they had been called upon to disperse sectarian mobs or engage murder gangs. These rarely had any stomach for a fight. On 13 August, a Sikh Jatha (war band) armed with machine-guns was intercepted by tanks and scattered after sixty-one had been killed.92 Elsewhere, disciplined and determined resistance, often by heavily outnumbered units, drove off marauding bands.
But the emotional strain on Indian troops was enormous. After four weeks of continuous action, Major-General Rees reported that his Punjabi soldiers had shown extraordinary moral resilience. As a result, ‘only in those areas in which the P[unjab] F[rontier] F[orce] was present was there any semblance of security, law and order’.93 Among the many horrific duties they had had to undertake was to rescue Muslim women who had been captured by Sikhs in Amritsar on 15 August, paraded naked and raped. Most were murdered but a few were saved and carried to sanctuary in the Golden Temple by Sikhs who had not abandoned their humanity.
The superhuman and courageous exertions of Rees and his men were not enough to prevent one of this century’s most appalling human catastrophes. The statistics collected by the intelligence analysts reflected its scale: on 14 September, it was calculated that 1.25 million non-Muslims were on the move to East Punjab, while 898,000 Muslims were heading for West Punjab. The last figure rose to over a million within a week.94 Refugees who travelled by foot in huge straggling convoys were preyed upon by gangs who tracked them like wolves, occasionally pouncing and then pulling back. Fugitives who travelled by train risked derailment followed by ambush. Assassins would sometimes hide among the passengers, concealing their knives and swords, and at a pre-arranged moment pull the communication cord. The halted carriages would then be attacked by their accomplices who had been waiting by the track.
In all, 5.5 million Hindus and Sikhs fled to India during the autumn and winter of 1947–48, and 5.8 million Muslims fled to Pakistan. It is impossible to calculate exactly how many died during this mass displacement. As with past Indian famines, the machinery did not exist to keep an exact tally of deaths, and in many cases the murder gangs buried their victims. The most credible estimates were obviously those made by the men on the spot: Sir Francis Mudie, the governor of West Punjab, estimated that 500,000 Muslims died trying to enter his province, while the British High Commissioner in Karachi put the full total at 800,000. This seems plausible given that, on 25 August, Indian intelligence sources in West Punjab calculated that at least 198,000 people had been killed in the provinces and a further 100,000 forcibly converted to Islam.95 This makes a nonsense of the claim by Mountbatten and his partisans that only 200,000 were killed, but it does wholly substantiate his detractors’ counterclaim that at least a million lost their lives.96
VI
Debates over digits cannot change the nature or the compass of the tragedy which occurred in the Punjab. They are, however, a reminder that Mountbatten’s judgement over the partition of the province and the measures taken for
local security were subsequently severely criticised. The hunt for scapegoats was quickly under way. On 10 September, the Pakistan Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, issued a communiqué to other Commonwealth governments in which he accused Mountbatten and Auchinleck of indifference towards the communal problem and what he described as an attempt to create a Sikh state on 9 August.97 Tara Singh, the Sikh militant, charged the British with deliberately waging war on his people for their refusal to support the Muslim League.98
Tension had reached such a pitch that in mid-September the War Office commissioned a report on the possible course of a future Indo-Pakistani war. The border massacres apart, an obvious bone of contention was Kashmir, whose Hindu maharaja, Hari Singh, was still undecided about whether to plump for India or Pakistan. The latter engineered a coup de main on 22 October, in which Pathan ‘volunteers’ led by ex-INA men invaded Kashmir at the ‘invitation’ of some Muslim rebels. A fresh front was opened in the religious war, with killings of Hindus and mass kidnapping of women, often by tribesmen, Pakistani troops and police. Many of the victims were sold as additional brides to Muslim men; it was said that one member of the Karachi parliament had 500 women in captivity for this purpose.99 As Muslim irregulars converged on Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital, the maharaja hurriedly opted for India. Indian troops were rushed into the state, and after some heavy fighting gained the upper hand by the end of the year.
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