Indian Summer

by Alex Von Tunzelmann

  ‘A terrific sense of urgency had been pressed upon him by everybody to whom he had spoken’, Campbell-Johnson wrote.20 But the records do not show anyone else pressing Mountbatten to hurry up: not the British government, not his advisers, not the Sikhs, not the Muslim League, not Gandhi, and not even the majority of Congress. Nehru and Patel may have hinted that they were keen to get on with governing, but neither expressed any demand that Mountbatten set a date in August that same year. The rush was Mountbatten’s, and his alone.

  A few months before the Mountbattens went to India, their marriage was in one of its healthier phases. Photographs of the time show them smiling, affectionate and relaxed, and their letters reveal a matching picture. A few weeks afterwards, they reached a nadir, and by the beginning of June were constantly fighting. It is hard to believe that this turbulence did not have an effect on Mountbatten professionally – especially as he had to work closely with Nehru and Gandhi, two men whose company his wife plainly preferred to his own. Edwina had not wanted to be in India in the first place, and in the first few weeks put pressure on her husband to ensure that they would be on their way back to Britain as soon as possible.21 Dickie had always striven to impress her with his achievements at work. Perhaps, if he could carry out the transfer of power swiftly and efficiently enough, he might still save his marriage.22

  Within days of the announcement that there would be two successor administrations in India, talk had turned to which of them would be Britain’s favourite.23 The smart money was on Pakistan. Muslim organizations in general, and particularly the League, had spent many years cultivating links with Britain. Pakistan was likely to be the weaker of the two states, and would be seeking out foreign alliances more hungrily than would India. Moreover, its western part was geographically advantageous. West Pakistan would border Persia, Afghanistan and China, three nations of strategic interest to Britain and the United States. It was close enough to Russia to be even more interesting on that count.

  Gandhi raised the question of favouritism with Mountbatten in early June, requesting that the British announce there would be no differentiation between the two dominions. The Viceroy took the matter up with the India Office in London, but received a cagey reply. ‘We all felt strongly that we should be extremely guarded in dealing with this request of Gandhi’s’, wrote Lord Listowel; ‘we feel that we should be very careful not to say that we shall not in any circumstances have closer relations with Pakistan than with India.’24

  ‘I have done my job,’ said Jinnah on 9 June, with some justification.25 He went on to address the last meeting of the Muslim League in the Imperial Hotel that day. The Imperial was Delhi’s grandest hotel, a short distance south of Connaught Circus on the avenue of Queensway. A perfectly spaced colonnade of royal palms screened its smooth, green lawns and pristine art deco frontage from the noise, smells and wandering livestock outside. That Monday, as usual, the better-heeled of Delhi’s visitors were taking tea on the terrace. The gentle murmur of conversation, and the clink of china and silver, were the only sounds emanating from a serene company of dignitaries, American journalists and grand European ladies. Upstairs, in the ballroom, Jinnah took to the stage in front of 425 delegates to present them with Mountbatten’s plan.

  Suddenly, a mob of fifty Khaksars – the fundamentalist sect that had been massing in Delhi for a month – burst through the palm colonnade on to the lawn, waving sharpened spades and shouting, ‘Get Jinnah!’ The hotel guests scattered; cups of Darjeeling tea smashed on the marble tiles, and chairs and tables overturned as the Khaksars stormed through the lounge and up the staircases. There they were met by Muslim League national guards, and a battle ensued. Jinnah would have been entitled to panic: the only serious assassination attempt ever made against him had been by a Khaksar who had broken into his house and stabbed him, four years previously. Instead he remained perfectly calm, and continued with his meeting while clashes, screams and thuds echoed up the stairs. He was addressed in the Persian style as ‘Shahenshah-e-Pakistan’ – Emperor of Pakistan. ‘I am a soldier of Pakistan, not its Emperor,’ he swiftly replied. The Mountbatten plan was accepted by 300 votes to 10. Soon the police arrived to subdue the combatants with tear gas, and Jinnah escaped without a scratch. The Imperial was not so fortunate. That evening, red-eyed guests still blinking away the tear gas sat down for dinner at its Shahnaz restaurant on broken furniture. A party from the Viceroy’s House arrived, and was taken to the Mughal Suite on the first floor. Edwina Mountbatten was one of those who picked their way through the wreckage to enjoy a banquet of homard à l’armoricaine and selle d’agneau farci de la paté, with a chilled glass of Chablis Premier Cru 1936.26

  On 18 June, the Mountbattens flew to the beautiful lakeside city of Srinagar, for a visit to the largest of India’s princely states, Kashmir. Nehru had already warned Mountbatten that the Muslim-majority Kashmir might prove to be a problem. Mountbatten knew the Hindu Maharaja, Sir Hari Singh, having first met him in Calcutta at Christmas dinner in 1921, for which Sir Hari had been specially selected as one of the British government’s best behaved princely allies. Their acquaintance had been sufficiently cordial that Dickie and Edwina had holidayed with him at Srinagar as late as 1946.27

  It was known that the Maharaja wanted Kashmir independent, a scheme unpalatable to Nehru, Gandhi and the British. The Mountbattens’ visit to Kashmir was not a raging success. At the opening banquet, Dickie accidentally set off a bell that had been installed under the table, which alerted the band to play ‘God Save the King’. The band dutifully struck up, at which guests dropped their chicken curry and scrambled to their feet. Mountbatten and the Maharaja’s son cracked up with laughter; but the Maharaja himself was thunderous with rage. The following day, the Maharaja dispatched the Viceroy on a long, lonely fishing trip.28 When he was allowed to return, Mountbatten found Sir Hari reluctant to be in his company. The two only spoke during drives together. On one of these, Mountbatten assured the Maharaja that he would be allowed a free choice of which dominion to join after 15 August, emphasizing the importance of ascertaining the will of the Kashmiri people, but making it clear that any moves to independence would be foolish and dangerous.29

  Mountbatten had asked Nehru to brief him on Kashmir just before he left for Srinagar, and received an essay in return arguing that, despite its overwhelming Muslim population of 92 per cent in Kashmir proper (excluding Jammu) and 77 per cent overall, ‘The normal and obvious course appears to be for Kashmir to join the Constituent Assembly of India.’ Furthermore, ‘It is absurd to think that Pakistan would create trouble if this happens.’30 Nehru himself was a Kashmiri by descent, and his detachment would repeatedly fail him when dealing with his ancestral state. Nonetheless, there was another reason for his desperation to secure Kashmir. If the North-West Frontier Province went to Pakistan, India would lose the Hindu Kush mountains – its natural defence against attack from the north. Mountbatten was insisting that a plebiscite be held in the NWFP, to the despair of Nehru and Gandhi. If both the NWFP and Kashmir went to Pakistan, there would be nothing but farmland between India and the Soviets, the Afghans, the Pakistanis, and the Chinese.31 The danger from the north was real and immediate, especially after 2 July, when Afghanistan revived its old claim to territory on the North-West Frontier, comprising most of the land between the Indus and the border. Fears abounded that the Afghans were being encouraged by the Russians, though some in India wondered whether their action was more to do with pan-Islamic ambitions. Nehru received a package of papers from an anonymous correspondent. ‘After Jinnah’s Pakistan has liquidated all Hindus inside its boundaries the big JEHAD of the twentieth Century will begin,’ it said. The correspondent went on to allege that Muslims in India had been directed to act as fifth columns among the Hindus, and ‘In the name of religion Mohammedan women are being ordered to entice Hindu men.’32 Nonsense though this was, the number of similar protests indicates that communal feeling was becoming ever more perilous.

  One month late
r, the North-West Frontier plebiscite would register a decisive vote to join Pakistan, with 289,244 for Pakistan against only 2874 for India. Mountbatten declared himself most satisfied with having ‘insisted on the referendum in spite of the strongest possible opposition’ from Congress.33 Neither he, nor his staff, nor anyone in London, seems to have realized that the die had been cast for conflict in Kashmir.

  The Mountbattens returned from Kashmir on 23 June. That day, the Punjab voted in favour of its own partition; Bengal had already done so. Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a London barrister, was flown in to take up the onerous and vulnerable job of drawing the lines of partition. He had been nominated by the British government with the approval of Jinnah.34 The Muslim League’s victory over the principle of basing statehood on identity inspired all sorts of new demands. The 3.5 million Pathans in the north-west were raising a call for a separate state of Pathanistan, and the ‘Frontier Gandhi’, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, added his voice to that call on 2 July.35 The original Gandhi also supported Pathanistan, though Jinnah condemned it as ‘disastrous’.36 The following day, Tamil separatists in the south cabled Attlee from Madras to note that they also wanted a separate Dravidanadu for Muslims and Dravidian people.37 Shortly afterwards, it was reported that the Naga tribes in Assam were keen to establish a Nagastan; their leaders turned up in Delhi, threatening to fight ‘to the last drop of their blood’ to win independence.38 The Sikhs were split over whether or not to accept partition, and some among them still hoped for a separate Khalistan. A Sikh protest day against the partition of the Punjab was declared. Many went to their gurdwaras wearing black armbands, and rumblings began to be heard from agitators. ‘With clear vision, determination, and vigour that is characteristic of our virile race, we shall extricate ourselves out of this whirlpool of annihilation that is facing us’, read one pamphlet. ‘Our phoenix-like rise shall signal the fall of our enemies.’39

  This rapidly expanding chaos made the British keener still to escape from India. In late June, riots in Lahore and Amritsar had left hundreds of houses burnt down. People running from their blazing homes were shot in the street for breaking the curfew order. Nehru was horrified, and asked Mountbatten to declare martial law. ‘If you will forgive a personal touch, I should like to tell you that my mother came from Lahore and part of my childhood was spent there’, he wrote to Mountbatten. ‘The fate of Lahore, therefore, affects me perhaps more intimately than it might many other people who are not connected with that city.’40 It affected Jinnah, too. ‘I don’t care whether you shoot Muslims or not,’ he told Mountbatten, ‘it has got to be stopped.’41 The Sikh minister Baldev Singh advised him to ‘shoot everyone on sight’. But the British government had made it clear that they would send no more troops or resources. Britain’s debit balance for imports and exports was running at over £50 million. The Chancellor, Hugh Dalton, had just announced that imports of tobacco, newsprint, petrol and some foods were to be scaled back drastically. There was nothing to spare for India. All Mountbatten could propose was the setting up of a multi-faith security committee, which would sit in Delhi and resolve that things would be better if everyone stopped killing each other.

  On 4 July 1947 – the 171st anniversary of another independence day in another of Britain’s colonies – the Indian Independence Bill was introduced into the House of Commons. Not only in India had its passage been perilous. Three days earlier, Churchill had written to Attlee in tones of profound outrage, demanding that the name of the bill be changed to ‘The India Bill, 1947’ or ‘The India Self-Government Bill’. India was becoming a dominion, he argued, not an independent state: if the word ‘independence’ remained, he would not be able to vote for it.42 Had the bill’s name been changed at this stage, Congress could not have accepted it. On the other hand, the prospect of forcing the bill through parliament without Conservative Party support raised the unthinkable possibility of it being defeated. Either eventuality would keep Britain in India and sabotage all the progress that had been made.

  Under the circumstances, Attlee did the best thing he could possibly have done. He did not reply to Churchill’s letter until the morning of 4 July itself, and then pointed out that it was too late to change anything. Churchill, who was recuperating after a hernia operation and had less of a fight in him than usual, gruffly accepted this, noting that his protest would remain on record.43

  A founding principle of Mountbatten’s plan was the reappointment of himself as joint Governor General of both new dominions for a short period after 15 August. Nehru had acquiesced; Jinnah had hedged, and recommended separate Governors General with a Supreme Arbitrator – in which post he was happy to have Mountbatten – to oversee such matters as the division of financial assets and arms stocks.44 Foolishly, Mountbatten had assumed that Jinnah would eventually come round to the idea of a single Governor General. As might have been guessed from his doodle on 2 June, Jinnah wanted to become Governor General himself.45

  During the last week of June, Jinnah announced that he would be unable to accept any position apart from Governor General of Pakistan in six weeks’ time. ‘What I thought would happen funnily enough’, wrote Edwina to Patricia, ‘and which neither Daddy nor any of his staff EVER contemplated has occurred’.46 Mountbatten tried to convince Jinnah that he would have more power as Prime Minister of Pakistan – an argument which a lawyer as assiduous as Jinnah would immediately have seen to be false. ‘In my position it is I who will give the advice and others who will act on it,’ replied the Quaid-e-Azam, who had clearly read the terms of the Indian Independence Bill very closely. ‘Do you realise what this will cost you?’ asked Mountbatten. ‘It may cost me several crores [tens of millions] of rupees in assets,’ Jinnah replied. ‘It may well cost you the whole of your assets and the future of Pakistan,’ snarled Mountbatten, and stormed out of the room.47

  Attlee told the cabinet that Jinnah’s demand ‘was no more than an indication of his own egotism’.48 Vain though Jinnah may have been, it would be unfair to attribute his action solely to a lust for fancy titles. He had turned down a British knighthood and sternly rebuked those who attempted to dub him Emperor of Pakistan.

  A more convincing reason for Jinnah’s refusal of Mountbatten’s candidacy was personal. Delhi was no place to keep a secret, and the gossips soon ensured that Jinnah found out about Mountbatten showing Nehru the then-secret plan at Simla on 10 May. He also found out that Nehru had been allowed to rewrite it.49 It was obvious that the Viceroy liked Nehru, and even close friends of Mountbatten would later admit that his corresponding dislike of Jinnah had become obvious by this point.50 Mountbatten had repeatedly proclaimed his preference for a united India, creating fears in the Muslim League that a joint Governor Generalship might favour the reabsorption of Pakistan, in line with Congress hopes.51

  But there was more to it than that. Yahya Bakhtiar, a Baluchistani politician who was a close associate of Jinnah’s, argued that a joint Governor Generalship under Mountbatten would have meant Pakistan ‘getting destroyed at inception’. By July, Jinnah had very strong reasons to suspect that Mountbatten was wrapped around Nehru’s finger. ‘Nehru in those days was having a roaring love affair with Lady Mountbatten,’ added Bakhtiar, ‘said to be with the tacit approval of Mountbatten.’52

  There is an intriguing tale told by S.S. Pirzada, later Foreign Minister of Pakistan, that Jinnah had been handed a small collection of letters that had been written by Edwina and Jawahar. ‘Dickie will be out tonight – come after 10.00 o’clock,’ said one of Edwina’s.

  Another revealed that: ‘You forgot your handkerchief and before Dickie could spot it I covered it up.’ A third said: ‘I have fond memories of Simla – riding and your touch.’

  Pirzada claimed that Jinnah discussed what to do about these letters with Fatima and his colleagues. In the end, Jinnah concluded that ‘Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion’, and had the letters returned.53 If this incident really did occur in late June 1947, it provides a credible reason for Jinnah’s sudden swi
tch from agreeing that Mountbatten could be a Supreme Arbitrator to refusing him any role whatsoever in Pakistan. Perhaps Edwina and Jawahar were just good friends at this point and the rumours of a roaring love affair jumped the gun; such details may be something that only the two of them will ever know. But exactly how roaring the love affair may have been by this point is of little consequence. They were known to be close, and they were known to have political influence with each other. The Pakistani government could not be expected to tolerate a situation in which its Governor General’s wife was to any substantial degree intimate with the Prime Minister of India. Jinnah could not have accepted Mountbatten’s candidacy.54

  On the evening of 2 July, Jinnah came to see Mountbatten, and told him flatly that the Muslim League would not negotiate further. Mountbatten sat with the Quaid-e-Azam for over four hours attempting to persuade, cajole and even bully him into changing his mind. The Viceroy dangled the carrot of British favour, and raised the stick of economic disadvantage: but Jinnah was completely immovable.55

  As soon as Jinnah’s position was known, the India Office drew up a top-secret memorandum. There was a specific danger in the provisional constitution: the powers granted to the Governor General of each dominion were ‘exceedingly wide’, allowing him a free hand in controlling most institutions of state, including the judiciary; not requiring him to act on the advice of his constituent assembly; and prescribing no limit to his tenure of office. ‘This position is innocuous and convenient if the Governor-General is a disinterested and transitory Englishman such as Lord Mountbatten,’ noted the India Office, whose staff perhaps did not know him awfully well. ‘Quite different considerations plainly arise if the holder of the office is an ambitious Indian.’ The memorandum predicted serious disturbances after the transfer of power, and recommended that full plans for the evacuation of all British troops and civilians be made without hesitation.56