Indian Summer
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The battle to bring Delhi back under control was prolonged and vicious. On 6 September, a bomb was thrown into New Delhi’s packed railway station, aimed at fleeing Muslims. The police arrived and fired into a massed Hindu crowd. By this point, 450 were reckoned to have been killed in the previous forty-eight hours of rioting alone. But the worst was still to come. The following day, outbursts of violence erupted all across Delhi, so simultaneously and so brutally that many thought it must have been planned. Looters descended on Connaught Circus, the huge central plaza of New Delhi, built by the proud British as concentric circles of graceful neoclassical arcades. This forum was filled with a baying mob, which began to smash up Muslim-owned shops. The army arrived, and attempted unsuccessfully to disperse the crowd with bullets and tear-gas. Nehru himself arrived a little later armed with a stick, plunged into the crowd and chased looters away from outside the Odeon Cinema. The orgy of destruction was not confined to goondas. Nirad Chaudhuri, who was present, described middle-class couples strolling away from the scene, loaded down with stolen handbags, cosmetics and bottles of scent. He also saw tongas, the light horse-drawn taxis mainly driven by Muslims, left burning by the sides of the road. Their drivers had been dragged from them and murdered. When he returned to his house, he looked back on a view of the city colonnaded with pillars of smoke from arson attacks, and soundtracked by the screams of fire engines and bursts of gunfire. That evening, 6000 Muslims fled from their homes in the middleclass Lodi Colony to the Pak Transfer Office in Connaught Place.21
The rest of 7 September was punctuated by repeated blasts of fire from Sten guns.22 Serious rioting was simultaneously underway in the princely state of Mysore in the south. In Bangalore shops were looted, apparently by police as well as civilians, and Congressmen arrested for lawbreaking.23 In Karachi that day, Jinnah was holding a garden party for the Emir of Kuwait, which was gatecrashed by 500 government workers demanding the rescue of their families from Delhi. Karachi itself had seen a slew of train attacks, bombings and assaults.24
By this point, thousands of Muslims had clustered in any part of Delhi that offered sanctuary: the Jama Masjid; the Purana Qila (Old Fort); Muslim graveyards and Mughal ruins; the Pakistani High Commission; the houses and gardens of well-known Muslims, including Nehru’s two Muslim cabinet ministers, Abul Kalam Azad and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai; and even Humayun’s Tomb, the same gorgeous marble mausoleum that had briefly sheltered the fleeing Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah II ninety years before. Outside the camps, things kept getting worse. On 8 September at Sabzimandi, north of Old Delhi, a confrontation between troops and rioters lasted for twelve hours, leaving the roads ‘littered with bodies’, and the town ‘burnt to ashes’, according to the British High Commissioner.25 Paharganj, just north of Connaught Circus, was reported to be ‘like a battle-field’, its streets filled with dead animals, its buildings ablaze, and the constant pattering of machine-gun fire in the air.26 All flights from Bombay and other cities into Delhi were cancelled. Reports suggested that 600,000 were involved in rioting in the city, and Muslim estimates put their death toll at 10,000. The telephone, telegraph and post systems shut down, as did all public transport.27 A shoot-to-kill order was issued to Delhi police and armed forces. Patel called the Sikh leaders to a meeting, and threatened to set up ‘concentration camps’ and put all Sikhs in them unless the leaders appealed for an end to the violence. They duly did.28 All weapons were banned except, to Jinnah’s fury, Sikh kirpans, which had to be sheathed.29 In conjunction with Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, Nehru organized an airdrop of more than 100,000 leaflets over the Punjab, saying that lawbreakers would be hunted down without mercy or hesitation. By the end of the day, the number of Muslims in the Pak Transfer Office in Connaught Place had doubled to 12,000.
The following day, the riot spread to Bara Hindu Rao, on the north side of Old Delhi. Insurgents had equipped themselves with hand grenades and firearms, and the police and troops had great difficulty in regaining order. More than 5000 residents had to be evacuated the following morning.30 The Pakistani High Commissioner, who had no means of communicating with his government and had long run out of food, absconded to the airfield with the intention of escaping to Karachi. Mountbatten heard in time, and sent a member of his staff to go and pull the man off the plane. The Governor General was acutely aware that the arrival of a hysterical diplomat ‘would have sent Mr. Jinnah through the roof’.31 Such was the confusion that the Pakistani government received the impression that its High Commissioner had been murdered, and a diplomatic incident was only narrowly avoided.32 The High Commissioner was persuaded to delay his departure for two days and allow Lord Ismay to accompany him but, once they got to Pakistan, Ismay was unable to force the terrified man to return to Delhi.33
Filled with aggrieved Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims, the capital had become a crucible for the rages that had boiled up across the Punjab. Large-scale riots were no longer a daily, but an hourly threat. In terror, the citizens of Delhi began to mark themselves out with visible signs that they were not Muslim. Hindus shaved their hair to leave a traditional ‘shikha’ tuft on the crown, and left shirts unbuttoned to show the white sacred thread worn across the chest. Indian Christians began to sew large red crosses on to their shirts. All the shops in central Delhi displayed placards saying ‘Hindu Shop’, regardless of their ownership. These public displays of religious identity only made the conflict more tribal.34
‘We are dealing with a situation which is analogous to war,’ announced Nehru on All-India Radio, ‘and we are going to deal with it on a war basis in every sense of the word.’35 But his tough stance isolated him from many in Congress, who conspicuously refrained from condemning Hindu atrocities in fear that they would lose the support of the Hindu majority. Nehru reminded the party’s president, Rajendra Prasad, that under Gandhi’s leadership Congress had always condemned even minor acts of violence. Now its politicians refused to criticize murder, rape and communal hatred. ‘I have no stomach for this leadership’, Nehru wrote in disgust. ‘Unless we keep to some standards, freedom has little meaning’.36 All hopes were now pinned on the small, khadi-draped figure who arrived in the capital by train that day.
Gandhi arrived back to great acclaim and expectations. ‘Delhi will now be saved,’ Muslims told each other. ‘Muslims will now be saved.’37 It was not just Muslims that would be saved, but Nehru, too. Gandhi returned from his triumph in Calcutta with his reputation at a new high, and immediately made his support public for Nehru’s unpopular policies of protecting Muslims, maintaining full religious tolerance, and avoiding war with Pakistan. His arrival had come at a time of desperate need. For those who had survived the riots so far, conditions in Delhi were grim. Communal feeling was so ingrained that, despite Nehru’s efforts, Indian government aid had only found its way to Hindu and Sikh refugees. Muslim refugees had been left to the Pakistani High Commission and non-governmental peace committees. Gandhi insisted that the government take responsibility for all faiths.38 Finding that the Untouchable settlement at the Bhangi Colony was now a refugee camp, Gandhi roomed in the grand New Delhi mansion of his sponsor, G.D. Birla. He visited dangerous sites, though with difficulty. When he visited Hindu camps, so uncontrollable was the ‘rush for darshan’, according to the Times of India, that he did not get a chance to speak.39 One of the first people to visit him was Edwina Mountbatten. Through her efforts for the refugees she formed a working bond with Gandhi that was even closer than her friendship with him in the months before partition.
In response to the crises of September, Nehru flourished. One of his oldest friends, Sri Prakasa, remembered sitting in sickened silence at the thought of the crisis when Nehru came and sat by his side. ‘There are only two things left for us now, Prakasa,’ Nehru said with affection. ‘To go under or overcome our difficulties. And we are not going under.’40 He devoted himself to his constant work with courage and diligence. ‘Almost alone in the turmoil of communalism,’ noted Alan Campbell-Johnson, ‘he spea
ks with the voice of reason and charity.’41 He set up a city of tents in his garden and filled that and his house with refugees, including two Muslim children he had personally rescued from a roof in Old Delhi while a riot raged below.42 Every day, he walked in the streets and listened to people tell him their sorrows. ‘I know, I know, mere bhai [my brother], it is my sorrow too,’ he replied.43 The old Nehru temper flared up frequently. Jawahar was being driven in his official car when he noticed a Hindu passerby with a cart full of loot from a Muslim neighbourhood. Immediately, he leapt out and told the thief to take it back. ‘They have their Pakistan, we will have our Hindustan,’ replied the man, at which Jawahar flew into a rage, grabbed him by the throat and shook him. ‘If I must die it is an honour to do so at your hands, Panditji,’ gasped the man. Jawahar dropped him in disgust and returned to his car.44
During that first September fortnight, Jawahar’s friendship with Dickie Mountbatten strengthened. ‘He has come suddenly to see me alone on more than one occasion – simply and solely for company in his misery; to unburden his soul; and to obtain what comfort I have to give’, Dickie wrote to the King.45 But Jawahar’s relationship with Edwina Mountbatten became more important still. While Dickie chaired committees, both Jawahar and Edwina fearlessly went out into the streets of Delhi to deal with the rioters. Edwina was with her friend, the Health Minister Amrit Kaur, when they heard that Jawahar had gone out alone. They found him attempting to stop a crowd of armed men. ‘Brought him back!’ Edwina wrote.46 Another evening, Jawahar heard of an attack planned on the Jamia Millia Islamia, a Muslim college outside Delhi. The college was in the middle of riot-torn countryside. At night, the students, fearing for their lives, turned off their lamps and stood guard. They could hear splashes as Muslims from nearby villages were chased into the Jumna River, pursued by mobs intent on drowning them. Without waiting to organize a bodyguard for himself, Jawahar got into a taxi and drove alone through the treacherous countryside straight there – only to find Edwina already on the site, without guards, trying to pacify the would-be raiders.47 ‘Did we get our freedom so that you could kill each other?’ Jawahar shouted at the mob. ‘He was,’ noted one observer, ‘a man who had no fear.’48
Again and again, events brought the two together. Richard Symonds, a friend of Edwina’s who was working alongside her in Delhi and the Punjab, noted the value of her friendship with Jawahar for the relief effort. ‘If we had problems where the Prime Minister’s attention was needed,’ he remembered, ‘she’d got it.’49 At eleven o’clock one evening, Jawahar’s sister Betty was in her brother’s house at York Road, when a telephone call came through from Edwina. Jawahar was not in, so she took the call – noting with interest that the Governor General’s wife had telephoned her brother personally, rather than having an aide-de-camp ring up. ‘Haven’t you heard that there is fighting between a Hindu and a Muslim camp?’ Edwina asked. ‘The rumor [sic] is that a Muslim from his camp shot a Hindu woman in their camp. So now the Hindus are up in arms throwing stones at the Muslims who are unable to protect themselves; and there aren’t enough guards. So I am going down there and I called to see if your brother would like to come with me, but of course …’
Without hesitation, Betty offered to come in Jawahar’s place. Edwina at first demurred. ‘I can’t have you hurt or dead on my hands,’ she said; but eventually she agreed that Betty might be helpful. Shortly afterwards, she arrived in a jeep, escorted by another in front and one behind, with discreetly armed guards. Together, the women drove out of the city to the Muslim camp in question. It was surrounded by an enormous and agitated crowd of Hindus and Sikhs, who were attempting to set it on fire. The few guards present could do little and had been backed against the wall. The man whose wife had been shot was leading the arsonists, screaming, ‘Nehru is protecting the Muslims and this is what they do!’
Edwina climbed out of the jeep, pushed past her guards and positioned herself between the mob and the camp gate. She turned to face the crowd, bricks and stones whizzing over her head, ‘as calmly as though she were at a garden party in the Moghul Gardens’, remembered Betty. Edwina started to address the mob, but her command of Hindustani was not adequate. Betty took over, jumping on top of the jeep and shouting for the crowd to stand down. She told them that her brother was away, but would be back the next day and would be sure to find the murderer.
Some of the protesters calmed down at her words, but the widowed man still attempted to incite them further. ‘All right,’ Edwina said to Betty. ‘Now tell them that if they continue this way we will order the guards to shoot down the agitators, it doesn’t matter which side they are on.’
Betty realized immediately that calling the mob’s bluff was a risky strategy. Even with their guards, she and Edwina were massively outnumbered by the rioters. If it came to a fight, they would probably be torn to pieces. But, lacking other options, she shouted out the message. To her great relief, it worked. The shouting stopped, and the crowd dispersed.
When the panic had subsided, Edwina and Betty went into the camp to talk to the terrified Muslims, who pleaded their innocence and said they had no guns. Betty was inclined to believe them. Most were half-naked, and none had many possessions. An hour later, they headed back to York Road, to find Jawahar just returned. Edwina told him the story. ‘Poor Bhai was so tired and distressed that he flew into one of his fine rages, angry at both sides,’ Betty recalled. He started an investigation the very next morning. It found that the dead woman had long been ill with tuberculosis. Worn out by caring for her, her husband had shot her himself – and blamed it on a Muslim. Unlike most of those involved in the partition war, who escaped prosecution, he was later convicted of murder.50
At the beginning of September 1947, Edwina noted in her diary her surprise at how deeply fond of Jawahar she had become.51 The feeling was obviously mutual. In at least one photograph of the two of them visiting a refugee camp, Jawahar’s hand can be seen clasped protectively around Edwina’s. Jawahar’s niece, Nayantara Pandit, came to live with him in October, and observed the relationship first hand. ‘It was a very deep emotional attachment, there’s no doubt about that,’ she remembered. ‘I think it had all the poignance of the lateness of the hour … that terrible cut-off-ness from the world, and anxieties about India, where are we going, all the rest of it. And then to find this – and for her, apparently, also a great and unique love.’52
Dickie would subtly facilitate Edwina’s relationship with Jawahar, just as he had with her other lovers; more so, in fact, for he liked Jawahar. But stoicism comes at a cost, and there is a glimpse of it in a letter Dickie wrote to Noël Coward in October. The film at Government House had been Coward’s masterpiece Brief Encounter, released two years previously and recommended to Dickie by Noël at the time.53 In it, a woman married to a kind but undemonstrative man falls in love with a passionate doctor. She goes through a spectrum of feelings, from exhilaration to despair; her husband simply keeps doing the crossword. Dickie, too, was firmly entrenched in the role of the accepting husband, though he preferred genealogy to crosswords. The congruence between the film and his own situation can only have been enhanced by the fact that Coward had based scripts on the Mountbattens before; and that Celia Johnson, the Edwina-lookalike actress in the lead role, had appeared in Coward and Mountbatten’s In Which We Serve as the wife of the Mountbatten character.
‘I have just seen “Brief Encounter” in our private cinema, and cannot refrain from writing to tell you how deeply it moved me’, wrote Dickie to Noël.54 The two men had drifted apart somewhat in recent years, but something about Brief Encounter had affected Dickie on an intimate level. It is almost the only instance among all his papers in which he can be seen to respond emotionally to any piece of art.55
So great had been the drama inside Delhi that it would have been possible to forget that the Punjab had not yet calmed. Richard Symonds drove up the Grand Trunk Road in late September, and observed fresh Muslim corpses by the side of the road. At a rai
lway station, he saw a band of 1000 Sikhs, armed with spears and kirpans, awaiting the arrival of the Pakistan Express train, with its consignment of Muslim refugees. When he arrived at the huge Kurukshetra refugee camp, it was to a scene of total disaster: cut off by monsoon rains and flooding, the camp had little food, no clothing, no blankets, no lighting, no medical supplies, and twice the number of people that it could accommodate in its tents.56
On 21 September, the Mountbattens took Nehru, Patel and a few others on a round trip in Dickie’s plane to view the Punjab migrations. Near Ferozepur, they found the first caravan – and followed it for over fifty miles against the stream of refugees without finding its source.57 The refugees moved slowly, in bullock carts or on foot, carrying children, the elderly and the infirm on their backs. Vultures followed the convoys, waiting for deaths which came frequently. Exhausted families would sometimes be forced to abandon their invalid relatives by the roadside rather than carry them further.58 Suffering pushed the communities further apart. Punjabi Hindu women entering Delhi openly rejoiced at the sight of streets filled with Muslim corpses. According to Nirad Chaudhuri, ‘the group of corpses which drew forth the strongest expression of delight from the ladies was that of a mother lying dead with her dead baby clasped in her arms.’59
That night, the party returned to Government House, where the Sunday film was A Matter of Life and Death, and the Sunday dinner was austere. The severe rations in Government House became severer still under Edwina’s watchful eye. When Lord Listowel, the former Secretary of State for India and now Secretary of State for Burma, came to visit, the Mountbattens threw a full ceremonial banquet with all the state pomp – and served a first course of cabbage-water, followed by a main course of one slice of Spam with a potato, and finished off with a solitary biscuit and a small piece of cheese.60 ‘The ADCs are mad with rage at me’, Edwina wrote with satisfaction, ‘as they think food can be spirited out of the skies’.61