On 25 July, Mountbatten – in full uniform, and gilded all over with decorations and orders – clinked his way up the red carpet to the Chamber of Princes at the Council House in Delhi. Beside him strode the senatorial figure of Vallabhbhai Patel. After the photographers had been chased from the chamber, Mountbatten stood to address a glittering throng of nobility. With his trademark combination of form and familiarity, Mountbatten informed these august presences that they ought to accede either to India or to Pakistan. He reminded them that the key factors in their choice should be the feelings and welfare of their subjects, and the geography of their states; he assured them that they would suffer no financial loss or erosion of sovereignty. As Patel looked on sagely, he warned them they were being made an offer that was not likely to be repeated. After 15 August, he would no longer be the Crown representative – and they would have to negotiate with the Indian or Pakistani governments directly. He added a detached observation that any armaments they might think of stockpiling would soon be obsolete.
So dazzling was Mountbatten’s performance that, even though he had just threatened the princes quite brazenly with conquest and subjugation by a future Indian government, the tone of the meeting quickly warmed up into a sort of friendly banter. The high point came when the Dewan of Kutch, representing the ailing Maharao of Kutch who had gone to Britain for medical treatment, questioned Mountbatten. The Dewan protested that he did not know his Maharao’s mind, and could not raise him from his sickbed with a telegram. Mountbatten picked up a glass paperweight that happened to be on his rostrum. ‘I will look into my crystal,’ he said, ‘and give you an answer.’ A full ten seconds of astonished silence ensued as Mountbatten peered into the paperweight. Finally, with faultless comic timing, the Viceroy intoned: ‘His Highness asks you to sign the Instrument of Accession.’59 Many of the princes laughed, and few even thought to complain as chits were passed round warning them that the Viceroy was very busy and that they would not be allowed to speak.60 No commoner could have pulled off such a daring act of lese-majesty; but many of the princes knew Dickie as a friend and a near-equal.
That night, Jinnah attended a small dinner-party at the Viceroy’s House. There was an awkward scene, during which Jinnah implied that Mountbatten was abusing the states by forcing them to accede too quickly, and pointed out that the British government did not share this urgency. Afterwards, Jinnah claimed that Edwina Mountbatten agreed with him. The specific subject of Kashmir came up. Jinnah noted that an accession either to India or to Pakistan would spark revolts, though he stated that he would apply no pressure.61 Apparently, this did not resolve the tensions. At the end of the dinner, Jinnah deliberately broke protocol by rising to leave the dining room at the same time as the Mountbattens.62
Two big flies remained in the Kashmiri ointment: the Maharaja, still evading any form of straight discussion, and Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru again tried to visit Kashmir at the end of July, describing it as his ‘first priority’.63 He had to be stopped by Mountbatten, Patel and Gandhi, on the grounds that this would be taken as political lobbying. According to Mountbatten, when Patel attempted to talk him out of it, ‘Nehru had broken down and wept, explaining that Kashmir meant more to him at the moment than anything else.’64 Gandhi went instead, took goat’s milk and fruit under a chinar tree with the Maharaja and his family, and told them to obey the wishes of their people. He was afterwards accused of lobbying for India in Nehru’s place.65
On 28 July, Mountbatten held a reception at which he, Patel and V.P. Menon joined forces to bully the princes. The Maharajas stood around nervously to watch this daunting triumvirate work on each of their fellows in turn. ‘Who’s H.E. [His Excellency] getting to work on now?’ one asked. ‘There’s no need for him to work on me. I’m signing to-morrow!’66 Mountbatten would not be able to provide Patel with a completely full basket of apples, but it is striking that he managed to secure as many as he did. After independence, Patel would maintain his focus on the states, corralling them into groups, extracting from them their vestigial rights and responsibilities, and assimilating them into the body of democratic India.
Most of the princes, reduced to the status of adequately remunerated mascots, would disappear quietly into estate management or gin palaces, as they pleased. But an impressive number of exceptions ran for office in the new democratic India. Among Indian princely families who were guaranteed privileges at the time of their accession, more than one-third have produced electoral candidates for public office.67 Whatever may be said about Mountbatten’s tactics or the machinations of Patel, their achievement remains remarkable. Between them, and in less than a year, it may be argued that these two men achieved a larger India, more closely integrated, than had 90 years of the British raj, 180 years of the Mughal Empire, or 130 years of Asoka and the Maurya rulers.
CHAPTER 14
A RAINBOW IN THE SKY
‘NATIVE RACES WITHIN THE EMPIRE ARE SHOWING AN EVER more lively appreciation of their status’, reported the British Imperial Review in August 1947. ‘The whole outlook has changed, and the native has been educated to echo the shibboleths of democracy.’ Self-congratulation reverberated in the Review‘s tone, as it surveyed the indigenous movements in New Zealand, Canada and South Africa: ‘the Maori and the Red Indian, under fostering and enlightened care, have shown a surprising and gratifying ability to survive … A mere advisory body does not satisfy the Bantu. He wants more executive power, something nearer equality.’1 Past and present were being revised at a speed to match Mountbatten’s haste in India. Had not the British Empire always been a kindly, generous, and even selfless father figure, gently shepherding flocks of dumb savages towards freedom and democracy? Old volumes of Lord Macaulay’s essays were retrieved from the attic and dusted off, and his assertion that the day India achieved self-rule would be ‘the proudest day in British history’ presented as incontrovertible evidence that, indeed, that had always been absolutely true.2 There seemed to be no real difference in attitude between Macaulay and Mountbatten. It followed, then, that what went between must have been progress.3
The new spirit of post-colonial liberation seemed to be everywhere. News from Indonesia provided the sense of superiority: the Dutch had embarked upon a new wave of atrocities against the indigenous rebels. News from Palestine added to the motivation: British military lorries were blown up by Jewish terrorists, and two young sergeants hanged from a tree near Natanya at the end of July. When the staff at the Viceroy’s House sat down to watch their Sunday film, Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, in the first week of August, they were treated to the bizarre but apposite spectacle of white actors with cut-glass English accents dressed up in fake tan, black wigs, linen and beads, refusing to submit to the Roman Empire with cries of ‘Leave us to settle our own affairs!’, ‘Yes, go back to your own country!’, ‘Egypt belongs to us, not to you!’, and ‘Egypt for the Egyptians!’
In India itself, security remained perilous. On 27 July huge crowds of Sikhs, estimated at over 10,000, attempted to enter the All-Punjab Sikh Conference in Lahore, and were fired upon twice by police. Dalip Singh, presiding, observed that ‘The British scheme for the partition of the country provides for an Empire for the Muslims in India.’4 Responding to the signals of future trouble, Mountbatten took a personal role in organizing a Punjab Boundary Force, under the command of Major-General T.W. Rees, whom he described as ‘a marvellous little man’.5 General Rees was supported by two high-ranking advisers, one Muslim, one Sikh; he had 50,000 mixed troops at his command, including a high proportion of British officers. ‘It is probably the largest military force ever collected in any one area of a country for the maintenance of law and order in peace-time,’ noted Alan Campbell-Johnson.6 On the same day, Attlee announced drastic cuts in foreign spending.
The British government was feeling the cold sweat of a financial crisis that threatened to overwhelm it. The next day, Sir Stafford Cripps met the American Under-Secretary of State in Paris, and tried to persuade him to
relax the terms of its $3.75 billion loan, of which Britain had only $1 billion left. By this point, the government in London was having secret plans drawn up in case the United States did not let it off the hook. These included a below subsistence ration of 1700 calories per person per day, and the conscripting of schoolchildren into agricultural work.7 Five days later Churchill, recovered from his illness, delivered a rousing speech at his birthplace, Blenheim Palace. He told an audience of 60,000 Conservatives that the only hope of national recovery was to have an election and throw out the Labour government.
With these troubles brewing, the Mountbattens’ relationship suffered further. ‘The last two days have been pretty good Hell’, Ismay wrote to his wife on 5 August. ‘Both Dickie and Edwina are dead tired, nervy as they can be, and right across each other. So that in addition to my other troubles, I have been doing peace-maker and general sedative … It’s very wearing for them, and for me.’8 While Edwina was concerned with world events and the plight of the growing number of victims of violence in the Punjab, Dickie seemed to be incapable of seeing beyond protocol. That day, he bothered Jawahar with a list of dates upon which the Union Jack might continue to be flown in India after independence. It is hard to imagine an issue of less pressing import that could have consumed the Viceroy’s time just ten days before the transfer of power. That evening, Edwina went alone to see Jawahar.9
Despite his preoccupation with trivialities, even Mountbatten could not ignore the fierce controversies thrown up by the two partitions of Bengal and the Punjab. For centuries, both regions had been melting-pots of cultures, a jumbled variety of Muslims and Hindus living side by side, with Sikhs, Buddhists, Animists and Christians fitted in too. In times of peace, it had not mattered much to which of these religions a Punjabi or a Bengali adhered. As Jinnah himself had admitted, most people within the regions tended to consider their local identity before their religious affiliation. But the importance of religious identity had been growing in the twentieth century, notably in India and more slowly in the world beyond it.
The reason for this effect can in part be traced to the British policy of ‘divide and rule’. Undoubtedly, the raj did plenty to encourage identity politics. The British found it easier to understand their vast domain if they broke it down into manageable chunks, and by the 1930s they had become anxious to ensure that each chunk was given a full and fair hearing. But picking a few random unelected lobbyists, based on what the British thought was a cross-section of Indian varieties, was not a reliable way to represent 400 million people. India’s population could not be divided into neat boxes labelled by religion and cross-referenced with social position. India was an amorphous mass of different cultures, lifestyles, traditions and beliefs. After so many centuries of integration and exchange, these were not distinct, but rippled into each other, creating a web of cultural hybrids and compromises. A Sunni Muslim from the Punjab might have more in common with a Sikh than he did with a Shia Muslim from Bengal; a Shia might regard a Sufi Muslim as a heretic; a Sufi might get on better with a Brahmin Hindu than with a Wahhabi Muslim; a Brahmin might feel more at ease with a European than he would with another Hindu who was an outcaste. When the British started to define ‘communities’ based on religious identity and attach political representation to them, many Indians stopped accepting the diversity of their own thoughts and began to ask themselves in which of the boxes they belonged. At the same time, Indian politicians began to focus on religion as a central part of their policies – defining themselves by what they were, and even more by what they were not.10
This phenomenon is shown at its clearest with Jinnah, who began his career as the leading light of Hindu–Muslim unity, and ended it by forcing the creation of a separate Islamic-majority state. But the arc of Jinnah’s career merely amplifies that of Indian politics as a whole. Congress was a largely secular and inclusive organization during Motilal Nehru’s prime in the first twenty years of the twentieth century. Though it was the opposite of his intention, the emergence of Gandhi gave confidence to religious chauvinists. While Gandhi himself welcomed those of all faiths, the very fact that he brought spiritual sensibilities to the centre of politics stirred up extreme and divisive passions. Fundamentalist Hindus were rare presences on the political scene before Gandhi. In the wake of Gandhi, though, Hindu nationalists were able to move into the central ground of politics; while organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), dedicated to the formation of a Hindu nation, swelled their ranks from the fringes. This was no slow, invisible political trend: it was happening visibly during the spring and summer of 1947, when holy sadhus clad in saffron robes marched around the streets of Delhi, bellowing forth political slogans.11 Rajendra Prasad, who was to become the President of the new Constituent Assembly, wrote to Nehru on 7 August telling him that since July he had received 164,000 letters and postcards demanding that cow slaughter be made illegal – a common concern of devout Hindus, but one which is often used and taken as an anti-Muslim strategy. It was the Muslims in India, and the Untouchables, who ran the lucrative leather and beef industries, mostly for export.12 The threat of a ban on cow slaughter naturally drove Muslims and Untouchables into the arms of more radical political organizations, which they felt would stick up for them. Whether the British caused division by carving up politics on the basis of religion, or whether they were simply responding to a trend in Indian society for Hindu nationalism and the beginnings of an Islamic resurgence, is an endlessly debatable question.
In an atmosphere of such tension, almost every part of the partition lines could be disputed by someone. But the three greatest controversies to haunt India’s and Pakistan’s future were those of two Punjabi districts, Gurdaspur and Ferozepur; and one Bengali district, Chittagong.
The Punjab is a great sweep of plain, laced with rivers, stretching from the Himalayas in the north to the Thar Desert in the west. It is one of the most fertile agricultural regions in the world, frequently described as the ‘bread-basket’ of India. According to a religious breakdown of the population, the western wing along the Indus had to go to Pakistan; the eastern wing between the Sutlej and Jumna Rivers had to go to India. The central sections were in dispute, mainly because they were rich, populous districts, and strategically important. Religiously speaking, the populations in those central tracts were far too integrated and too complex for a straight partition of their land. The economic case was labyrinthine. There would be conflicting interests over the divisions of holy shrines, railways, defensive frontiers, and water supplies.
A Punjab Boundary Commission had been set up to report to Sir Cyril Radcliffe, with four judges – two Muslims, a Hindu and a Sikh. These judges were given no mandate to negotiate with political leaders or other interested parties, which might have been supposed to be their most crucial function. Instead, they simply heard the cases presented, and then predictably divided in two when it came to the judgement – the Muslims sticking together, and the Sikh siding with the Hindu. Radcliffe was left to consider these inconclusive verdicts, and consequently had no choice but to make the decision of where to draw the dividing line entirely according to his own opinions. Suffering terribly from the heat, he was left alone with a secretary in a bungalow in the grounds of the Viceroy’s House, amid daunting piles of maps, submissions and reports. He was not supposed to speak to any of the Indian leaders about his work, including the Viceroy; perhaps blessedly, he enjoyed a complete ignorance of Indian politics, and had never previously been east of Gibraltar.13 He later admitted that it would have taken two years to draw up a just partition.14 The Governor of the Punjab, Evan Jenkins, told Mountbatten it would have taken twice that to partition it peacefully.15 Radcliffe had forty days.
In 1556, aged fourteen, Akbar had been crowned emperor at Gurdaspur.16 In 1947, its significance was that it provided the only useful land-link between India and Kashmir. Further east along the Indo-Kashmiri border, the Himalayas rose so high as to prohibit a readily navigable
route. Mountbatten has been accused of interfering with the decision on Gurdaspur, and certainly its fate had worried Nehru.17 Most of it did eventually go to India, but there is good reason to think it would have done so anyway. As early as February 1946, when Lord Wavell had drawn up an estimate for what might constitute Pakistan, he had insisted that Gurdaspur must be kept with Amritsar. If it were not, Amritsar would be encircled to the east, west and north by Pakistan, rendering the Sikh position untenable. This would have proved a decisive factor in the apportioning of Gurdaspur regardless of the road link to Kashmir.18 On that basis, Mountbatten’s innocence of the charge of interfering with Gurdaspur is credible, though not proven beyond doubt.
The case of Ferozepur entails a lot more doubt, and a lot less innocence. Ferozepur was a narrowly Muslim-majority district running along the south bank of the Sutlej River, with a population of over half a million people. It included a major arsenal as well as the headwaters that irrigated the princely state of Bikaner. A salient within it, sticking out forty miles into Sikh lands and effectively encircling Amritsar to the south, had been assigned to Pakistan.19 This can be seen from a provisional map sent from Mountbatten’s private secretary, George Abell, to Evan Jenkins on 8 August. The map showed the approximate border, which was to be finalized the next day. ‘There will not be any great changes from this boundary’, Abell wrote.20 But the Ferozepur salient was of evident concern to Bikaner, which had already agreed to go to India. Kanwar Sain, the Chief Engineer of Bikaner, said that he and his Prime Minister visited Mountbatten on 11 August. They told him that, if the Ferozepur headwaters went to Pakistan, so too would their state.21
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