Indian Summer

by Alex Von Tunzelmann

  Attlee drafted, but did not send, a stern telegram to Mountbatten on 13 May. He pointed out that the cabinet had been under the impression that Nehru would definitely accept Mountbatten’s plan, and that consequently they had made no substantial alterations to it. Any mistakes in it were Mountbatten’s, not theirs.54 The following day, Attlee’s private secretary wrote him a note about ‘the plan … for a Minister to go out to India to settle matters there with full powers and the minimum of reference home’. The secretary strongly recommended that Attlee himself went to Delhi: ‘This gesture would, I feel, fire the imagination of the world.’55 But Attlee recoiled from such a prospect, and no other minister could be found: they were all too ill, too busy or too inexperienced. In the end, Mountbatten was summoned back to London to explain himself.

  It was a reprimand, and Mountbatten took it very badly. Without hesitation, he threatened to resign. Edwina, together with V.P. Menon, calmed him down.56 It was Edwina, too, Menon’s daughter remembered, who extracted a concession from Nehru to offset the revisions to the plan. She persuaded him that India should accept an initial phase of dominion status.57 This was no mean feat. Dominion status had been seen as an unacceptable halfway house by Congress since its declaration of ‘purna swaraj’ (complete self-rule) in 1930, and by Nehru, who had been behind that declaration, for longer still. It is a clear demonstration of Edwina’s extraordinary intimacy with Jawaharlal Nehru and her influence over policy. Menon’s daughter was not the only one to express such a view. ‘I have often wondered how Jawaharlal was won over by Lord Mountbatten’, wrote Nehru’s close friend Abul Kalam Azad, the highest-ranking Muslim in Congress. ‘Jawaharlal is a man of principle, but he is also impulsive and amenable to personal influence … perhaps even greater was the influence of Lady Mountbatten.’58 Where several viceroys and Sir Stafford Cripps had failed, Edwina Mountbatten succeeded – saving her husband’s political career as well as the entire process of the transfer of power.

  It was announced that Mountbatten would be returning to London for an unscheduled visit, the press apparently swallowing the cover story that the government had decided it must have ‘final discussions’ with him ‘in view of the importance of these arrangements’.59 On 18 May, the Mountbattens and V.P. Menon left for London by air. They emerged drawn and unsmiling at Northolt Airfield the following afternoon. ‘He has met the Indian leaders and heard their views, but fires still rage in Lahore, and disorders are at their height in the Punjab!’ exclaimed the Pathé News announcer, as if pitching a new adventure comic. ‘Only twelve months now remain in which to complete the transfer of power to the Indians!’60

  Mountbatten met with the opposition, in the forms of Churchill, Anthony Eden, John Anderson and Lord Salisbury, and reassured them off the record that it might be worth their while to take up Nehru’s concession. If they were prepared to offer India a very early transfer of power, they could expect it to accept dominion status rather than full independence.61 The next day, Churchill wrote to Attlee that ‘if those terms are made good, so that there is an effective acceptance of dominion status for the several parts of a divided India, the Conservative Party will agree to facilitate the passage of this session of the legislation necessary to confer dominion status upon such several parts of India.’62 There was no ambiguity in his words. It was the phase of dominion status, as secured by Edwina, that persuaded him to support the bill.

  Mountbatten himself was deeply passionate about the idea of the Commonwealth, and retaining the Indian territories within it was a preoccupation of his and the opposition’s, not the government’s. ‘It is the definite objective of His Majesty’s Government to obtain a unitary Government for British India and the Indian States, if possible within the British Commonwealth’, Attlee had written in his commission to Mountbatten back in February.63 That last clause had been added at the specific request of Dickie himself.64 Mountbatten supported it out of a sense that international brotherhood was a splendid thing for world peace and understanding. The opposition’s reason was not dissimilar, though with a heavier emphasis on its advantages for Britain. As Leopold Amery wrote to Churchill shortly afterwards, ‘we can only hope that, somehow or other, the Britannic orbit will remain a reality in this parlous world even if, to assume the worst, Indian politicians are unwise enough to wish to break the formal link.’65 On the government side, the new India Secretary Lord Listowel, who had replaced Pethick-Lawrence just weeks before, was in strong accord with the Conservative view.

  Mountbatten saw Churchill again on 22 May, finding him still in his bed – a sight well-known to the old man’s colleagues. Churchill habitually organized breakfast meetings over a cigar and a weak whisky and soda, often attended by his malodorous poodle, Rufus, and his budgerigar, Toby, the latter perching on a square sponge atop the Churchillian pate.66 On this occasion, Mountbatten remembered that Churchill was ‘extremely pleasant’ to him. ‘Winston Churchill said he wished to congratulate the Government on their perspicacity in appointing someone of my intelligence,’ he told historians Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre in the 1970s. ‘I do want that quoted.’ In a letter written to Attlee immediately after the meeting in question Churchill implied that, in fact, his feelings about Mountbatten were rather more ambivalent, and that he would like his Conservative colleagues to be allowed to question him further in secret.67 It is no easy feat to maintain one’s focus while being scolded by a man with a budgerigar on his head, and perhaps Mountbatten’s confusion is attributable to such a distraction. Certainly Mountbatten seemed ‘very anxious’ about the old man’s attitude when he spoke to Amery later that week. ‘Dominion status has done something to ease the position with Winston, but he still fears some explosion’, Amery noted.68 All accounts agree that Churchill gave Mountbatten a message to deliver to Jinnah. ‘This is a matter of life and death for Pakistan, if you do not accept this offer with both hands,’ the Conservative leader advised the Muslim. Mountbatten emphasized to his staff that Churchill’s opinion was the only one in the world likely to sway Jinnah.69

  The signs of cooperation from the Muslim League were mixed. Jinnah used Mountbatten’s absence to voice a demand for a 1000-mile corridor through the Indian Union to connect East and West Pakistan – something which the British had already dismissed, and Nehru immediately denounced as ‘completely unrealistic’.70 On the other hand, the Jinnah made an uncharacteristically generous announcement about the Viceroy. ‘Lord Mountbatten’s efforts will secure full justice to the 100 millions of Mussalmans,’ he wrote. ‘I am not in the habit of flattering anyone, but I must say that throughout our discussions and examination of the various points, I was impressed by the high sense of integrity, fairplay and impartiality on his part and, therefore, I feel that Lord Mountbatten will succeed in his great mission.’71

  Beyond the main parties, signs continued that the communal interests were gearing up to welcome Mountbatten back. A Hindu fundamentalist party, the All-India Dharma Sangh, issued a summons to its followers. Hindu holy men began to pour into New Delhi, opposing partition, cow slaughter, and the ban on Untouchability which the constituent assembly had passed on 29 April. At the same time, fundamentalist Muslims poured in from the United Provinces and the Punjab. Bands of Khaksars, a militant group known as the ‘Servants of the Dust’, were seen to be gathering in the city and wearing fascist-style uniforms; large numbers were arrested, and had their weapons confiscated, but still more came.72

  The Mountbattens left Northolt airfield on the morning of 29 May. Two days later they were in Delhi, Dickie clutching the new version of his plan, as approved by the British cabinet; Edwina bearing placatory gifts for Fatima Jinnah.73 The plan had been sold to the British government. Now, it had to be sold to the Indians.

  CHAPTER 12

  LIGHTNING SPEED IS MUCH TOO SLOW

  THE PLAN HAD BEEN APPROVED; THE ACTS DRAFTED; Mountbatten returned to Delhi, chastened but still hopeful. ‘We are just starting our fateful week with the temperature already over 112 and th
e whole scene very explosive but we hope for the best’, wrote Edwina on 2 June.1 ‘I find myself all alone,’ said Gandhi. ‘Even the Sardar [Patel] and Jawaharlal think my reading of the situation is wrong and peace is sure to return if partition is agreed upon … the future of independence gained at this price is going to be dark.’2

  That morning, the future leaders of India and Pakistan were summoned to the Viceroy’s study for a two-hour briefing on the new plan. Sitting around the table with him were Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and J.B. Kripalani for Congress, Jinnah, Liaquat and Abdur Rab Nishtar for the League, and Baldev Singh for the Sikhs. ‘I got the feeling that the less the leaders talked, the less the chance of friction and perhaps the ultimate breakdown of the meeting,’ noted Mountbatten, and consequently filibustered for as long as possible. His ploy was to declare upfront that he was not asking for the leaders’ agreement to the plan – for he knew that it met no one’s demands. If they accepted that the plan was a solution in the interests of the country, that would be enough. He asked the leaders to let him have their responses by midnight. Jinnah told Mountbatten he would return at eleven o’clock after consulting his committee and, sending the others off to read their copies of the plan, Mountbatten held him back ‘to impress on him that there could not be any question of a “No” from the League.’ After he left the room, Alan Campbell-Johnson picked up a scrap of paper that the Quaid-e-Azam had left behind him, covered in scribbles from the meeting. The words ‘Governor General’ were written in inverted commas and underlined in the middle of the page; around it was a collection of symbols. ‘I am no psychologist,’ admitted Campbell-Johnson, ‘but I think I can detect the symbols of power and glory here.’ In contemplating his success, Jinnah had drawn a collection of phallic shapes, all pointing proudly upwards.3

  One troublesome icon having been dealt with, another showed up. Gandhi had spent the previous week railing against the new plan, and trying to revert to the Cabinet Mission plan of 1946 – which he had been instrumental in refusing. The Congress Working Committee was thoroughly annoyed with him, and Mountbatten too had had his fill of the Mahatma. ‘He may be a saint but he seems also to be a disciple of Trotsky’, the Viceroy wrote to London. ‘Judge then of my astonished delight on finding him enter the room with his finger to his lips to indicate that it was his day of silence!’ Mountbatten spent forty-five minutes explaining why the Cabinet Mission plan could not be enforced if any party was opposed to it, with Gandhi scribbling replies on the backs of old envelopes.4

  At midnight, Jinnah returned to the Viceroy’s House, ready to hurl another spanner into Mountbatten’s fragile works. As the constitutional leader of the Muslim League, he said, it was not in his power to accept the plan tomorrow. However, he would do his best to ensure the council of the League would accept it, and would bring it up at their next meeting – in a week’s time.

  This was exactly the sort of manoeuvre guaranteed to make Congress back out, and Mountbatten knew it. He told Jinnah that he had only secured Congress acceptance on the basis that the Muslim League would accept simultaneously, but Jinnah would not budge. ‘If that is your attitude,’ Mountbatten told him, ‘then the leaders of the Congress Party and the Sikhs will refuse final acceptance at the meeting in the morning; chaos will follow, and you will lose your Pakistan, probably for good.’

  Jinnah shrugged. ‘What must be, must be.’

  ‘Mr Jinnah!’ exclaimed Mountbatten. ‘I do not intend to let you wreck all the work that has gone into this settlement. Since you will not accept for the Moslem League, I will speak for them myself.’ He told Jinnah that, in the meeting, he would announce that he was satisfied with Jinnah’s assurances, a hair-splitting legalistic move that would hopefully fool Congress into thinking Jinnah had accepted: ‘and if your Council fails to ratify the agreement, you can place the blame on me.’ When he mentioned Jinnah’s assurances, he would look at Jinnah – and Jinnah should nod his head in agreement.

  Mountbatten looked at Jinnah then. Silently, the Quaid-e-Azam nodded his head.5

  The next morning, the leaders of all parties arrived back at the Viceroy’s House, tired and acquiescent. Mountbatten was prepared to listen to their many reservations in private, but decided that none should be allowed to speak at the meeting in case they upset each other. And so, for the first time in history, no party raised an objection against a plan for independence. Immediately after they had not objected, Mountbatten theatrically raised and then thumped on to the table a plan for the transfer of power. In the first paragraph, this revealed the unexpected fact that power was to be transferred by 15 August 1947 – ten months in advance of the June 1948 deadline, and just ten weeks from the 3 June meeting itself.6 The room’s silence changed its quality from one of studied etiquette to one of shock. The Viceroy dismissed the bewildered leaders into the searing brightness of a Delhi day, and could reflect on his personal moment of glory. Both parties had been forced to compromise – Congress accepting partition, Jinnah more or less accepting what would probably be a moth-eaten Pakistan – but he, Mountbatten, had finally been able to set a date.7

  Mountbatten left the leaders as little thinking time as possible between their acceptance of the plan and their distinctly un-triumphant addresses to the nation on All-India Radio that afternoon. ‘It is with no joy in my heart that I commend these proposals, though I have no doubt in my mind that this is the right course,’ said Nehru, sadly. Jinnah, too, noted that ‘We cannot say or feel that we are satisfied,’ and finished on the slogan ‘Pakistan zindabad’ (‘Long live Pakistan’), apparently misheard by some listeners as a exultant crow of ‘Pakistan’s in the bag!’8 Mountbatten declared again that he would have preferred to preserve the unity of India. ‘But there can be no question of coercing any large areas in which one community has a majority, to live against their will under a Government in which another community has a majority. And the only alternative to coercion is partition.’9

  In London, the terms of the plan were announced in the House of Commons at half past three that afternoon. Leo Amery had promised Mountbatten he would write a letter to The Times ‘to steady Conservative opinion here, in case Winston proved fractious’, but even Winston was in a placatory mood.10 ‘I am sure that Dickie has done marvellously,’ noted Harold Nicolson, who was present. ‘But it is curious that we should regard as a hero the man who liquidates the Empire which other heroes such as Clive, Warren Hastings and Napier won for us. Very odd indeed.’11 So it may have seemed, but Mountbatten was serving his country with as much loyalty, courage and determination as had those other heroes. Mountbatten turned a stagnating mess into perhaps the most successful retreat from empire in history – from the point of view of the imperialist nation, at least. If his conduct has provoked censure as well as acclaim, then perhaps that is the price any hero must pay; Clive, Hastings and Napier have.

  The following day, 4 June, Mountbatten gave a bravura performance of the charisma that had allowed him to pull off this feat. At the press conference he had called to announce the plan, he was warm, witty and spectacular, disclosing the startling closeness of independence in answer to a question like a stage magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. Mountbatten had chosen 15 August ‘out of the blue’, he admitted – it was the second anniversary of VJ Day, but nothing more significant than that.12

  Just before the Mountbattens had left England in March, Edwina had answered a relative’s concerns briskly. ‘Don’t worry,’ she had said. ‘This is going to be a marvellous experience – and Dickie says we’ll be back as soon as we can – and that means not long.’13 By the end of May, Mountbatten had browbeaten the government into making it even less long than it might have been. Attlee had given Mountbatten an exit-date of 1 June 1948. This was a tight schedule in any case, bearing in mind the complexity of Indian politics and the possible repercussions of the process. And yet, undaunted by the task before him, the last Viceroy took the bizarre and unilateral decision to speed independence up.

  ‘When I
got out to India I realized … that, although we in London had visualized the programme of transfer for June, 1948, to be moving at lightning speed, in India it was regarded as being much too slow,’ Mountbatten would tell a meeting of the East India Association in London the following year. ‘Everybody there was agreed on this point: the leaders, leading British officials, my staff advisers.’14 This was manifestly untrue. After seeing the plan at Simla, even Nehru had told him he was going too fast.15 Another Congress politician told him that the timetable would only have been workable if the British had announced a five-year date for their departure two or three years previously.16 For the Muslim League, Liaquat stated that he did not believe under any circumstances, united or divided, India could stand on its own legs by June 1948.17 Several of the princes had begged the British to stay. As for the British officials and Mountbatten’s staff advisers, the archives show them to have been explicitly opposed to haste.18 V.P. Menon had advised Mountbatten that ‘The psychological effect of power having been transferred earlier than 1948 will be an invaluable factor in the long-term view of Indo-British relationship.’19 But Menon made it clear that this would hold true only if there was a complete transfer of power to the whole of India of dominion status, followed by ‘not less than four or five years’ during which the parts of the country would draw up their constitutions. He envisaged a joint defence policy and a joint Governor General of India and Pakistan in this eventuality, which is very different from what actually happened. In fact, the only person who seemed to agree unreservedly with Mountbatten that power had to be handed over so far ahead of time was his public relations adviser, Alan Campbell-Johnson.