Nehru replied the next day. ‘We have not started the fighting,’ he protested. ‘I am convinced that the whole of this business has been very carefully planned on an extensive scale.’ After Kashmir, he wrote, the next objective would be Patiala; then the East Punjab; then Delhi itself. ‘On to Delhi is the cry all over West Punjab.’107
The Mountbattens had been due to set off on another trip to Gwalior. By the time Dickie received Nehru’s letter, and panicked, he considered the hour too late to cancel, though he believed that there was an immediate danger of war between India and Pakistan. He had been furious when Attlee threatened to have him superseded as Viceroy. Now it was he who sent a message to Attlee begging him to come out personally and take the crisis out of his hands.108 Attlee refused to do so.109 Mountbatten also asked Nehru to contact Attlee with a full report on Kashmir – though Nehru, again struck down with a cold at an inopportune moment, was confined to his bed and could not. Attlee sent him a sternly worded message telling him not to move forces into Pakistan, even if he thought such an action would constitute self-defence. ‘I am gravely disturbed by your assumption that India would be within her rights in international law’, he wrote. Moreover, Indian hopes for a quick and sharp campaign were ‘very optimistic … all military history goes to shew how difficult it is to deal with the tribes of the N.W. Frontier’.110
While these debates were going on, India began to drop half-ton bombs on Pathan tribes along the 500-mile front of Kashmir’s southwest. Within India, the government’s standing was precarious. There was a strike by half a million textile and industrial workers on 29 December, and a riot led by communist students against Congress in Bombay two days later. Finally, on the very last day of 1947, Nehru gave in to Mountbatten’s persuasion and instructed the Indian ambassador in Washington to submit an appeal to the UN Security Council.111 In under five months, the two nations of India and Pakistan had embroiled themselves in an irresolvable war.
CHAPTER 18
MAYBE NOT TODAY, MAYBE NOT TOMORROW
AFTER NEHRU HAD SHOUTED AT HIM OVER POONCH AT THE beginning of December, Edwina’s friend Richard Symonds had been struck down with typhoid. Gandhi had taken him in at Birla House to convalesce, and G.D. Birla himself had slipped him brandy behind the Mahatma’s back. Symonds had been visited by Patel, with gentle words; Gandhi, ‘more charming & amusing than I have ever known him’; and Nehru himself, contrite after his outburst, ‘twirling & sniffing at one deep red rose, like Ferdinand the Bull’. Gandhi had invited some Christian women to decorate Symonds’s room for Christmas, which they did with great enthusiasm. Unfortunately, all the baubles, streamers and tinsel were tied to the ceiling fan and, when the Pakistani High Commissioner turned up to talk about Kashmir, he had become so involved in his grievances that he accidentally switched it on.1
The High Commissioner’s ceiling fan disaster was an apt metaphor for the political situation as a whole. So worked up had the politicians on both sides become about the details of who had acceded when, and which soldiers had been sent in where, that they had accidentally set off one of the most serious ongoing security crises in history. Mountbatten’s state of open desperation by the end of 1947 demonstrated that he, at least, had begun to realize the full magnitude of what had been unleashed. His insistence on taking the Kashmir issue to the United Nations had been based on two sincere beliefs: first, that conflict between India and Pakistan would escalate; and second, that the better option was to cool the governments down and persuade them to talk. He was right on the first point. When the UN Security Council met in January, it observed that the danger of an imminent attack by India on Pakistan from the East Punjab was ‘clearly acute’.2 Meanwhile, the British High Commissioner in Karachi observed that any invasion by India would ‘uncork a Jehad’ in retaliation.3
On the second point, though, the decision to involve the United Nations was problematic. The Indian government was not prepared to talk, except about how much blame should be put on Pakistan for aiding the tribesmen.4 But, if the Security Council adopted a resolution blaming the Pakistani government, India might order a full invasion of Pakistan. The best chance of peace, it considered, was to persuade Pakistan to call off the tribesmen; but Pakistan would not do so unless the safety of Muslims in Kashmir could be guaranteed.5 The UN would have to send in a neutral peacekeeping force – and the only troops who had knowledge of the language and the terrain were British.6 The British government reacted to the suggestion that it might put its soldiers back into the subcontinent with abject horror.7
Rather than calming the two dominions down, the chance to air their grievances at enormous length on the international stage would rile them up.8 Attlee telegraphed his most important ambassadors on 10 January to emphasize that under no circumstances should they allow Pakistan to think they were siding with India, because ‘In view of Palestine situation this would carry the risk of aligning the whole of Islam against us.’9
Attlee’s fears were prescient. Israel was due to become an independent state on 14 May, prompting an immediate response characterized by the Pakistani newspaper Light. Under the headline ‘America’s challenge to Islam’, the Light contrasted Washington’s refusal to recognize Pakistani Kashmir with its keenness to recognize the state of Israel. The article described the United States’ backing for Israel against the Arabs as ‘the first link in the chain of planned acts of hostility’ against Islam, and regretted that its policies were pitting Islam against its natural ally, democracy.10
In fact, Britain effectively did side with Pakistan. The British delegation at the UN was scrupulous in its insistence that India and Pakistan both had valid claims to the territory, and heavy in its implication that the Muslim majority in Kashmir gave Pakistan the edge.11 But in India, as well as in Pakistan, the retreat of the British left a new world superpower to take the blame. According to Mountbatten, by the end of January, Nehru was describing the UN as ‘an American racket’.12
Kashmir was threatening to become a major focus for the Cold War. On 13 January, the British Ambassador in Moscow reported that the Russians suspected that Britain had made a secret military agreement with Pakistan. The Soviet press claimed openly that Britain was ‘inciting Pakistan to seize Kashmir’.13 It was an easy accusation to make, for the armies of India and Pakistan were still to a significant extent commanded by British officers. Dickie Mountbatten was not the only serviceman whose position had become awkward, and the absurdity of the situation soon threatened mutinies. Stafford Cripps alerted Attlee to a private letter from the Royal Indian Air Force’s Air Marshal T.W. Elmhirst, who stated frankly that he would resign if sent to fight the Pakistanis in Kashmir. ‘I am not prepared to command the King’s Indian Air Force to battle against the King’s Pakistan Air Force commanded by a friend of mine,’ he wrote. ‘It’s quite time H.M.G. took a firm line.’14 London had issued a stern warning that no British officers were to serve in Kashmir, but many of the men in question felt strong personal ties to their fellow soldiers and loyalty to the dominion they served. It was impossible to stop them working from the sidelines. Richard Symonds, who served on the United Nations commission in Kashmir after he recovered from his illness, described a farcical situation. The British Commanders-in-Chief of the Indian and Pakistani forces would ring each other up as if they were arranging a tea-party: ‘If you bomb this,’ they would say, ‘we shall shell that.’15
The last four months of 1947 had witnessed a spectacular revival in the popularity of Mohandas Gandhi in political circles. With his image boosted by the success of his fast in Calcutta and ministrations in Delhi, he had resumed his role as a guru to many of the leading lights of the Indian government. Despite this renewed demand for his spiritual leadership, the Mahatma himself remained disconsolate. ‘I must achieve something or die in the attempt’, he wrote.16 Stories of communal outrages distressed him; the presence of armed police and the military in Delhi horrified him. ‘Votaries of non-violence today have had to put their trust in the weapon
s of violence’, he observed. ‘What a severe test it is going to be for us.’17 But both Nehru and Patel made daily pilgrimages to his sparse, airy chamber in the opulent Birla House.
To the distress of Gandhi, Nehru and Patel – never the best of friends – were developing a deep antipathy towards each other, splitting and stalling the government. Patel viewed Nehru’s scrupulously unjudgemental treatment of India’s remaining Muslims as indulgent and dangerous to national security. He also resented Nehru’s attempts to root out the Hindu nationalists of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), describing them as ‘patriots who love their country’.18 Many observers thought that, once the freedom struggle was over, Congress should have split.19 A strong right wing under Patel, and a strong left wing under Nehru, might have produced a balanced two-party system. But Congress stayed together, united more by sentimentality than by a common political goal. When Patel chose Hindu nationalist Purshottam Das Tandon for Congress President, a man who openly supported an aggressive policy towards Pakistan and opposed industrialization, many of Nehru’s usual supporters walked out of the party in protest. Nehru was isolated, and Patel had placed himself at the centre of the party, with the interests of the landowning and industrial elite behind him.20 On 6 January, Nehru told Gandhi that he had reached an impasse. Either Patel had to go, or he would.
One week later, to the surprise of even his closest intimates, Gandhi embarked upon his final fast. Before, he had always discussed the intention to fast at great length; the period of warning and discussion had been an essential part of the tactic. This time, both Nehru and Patel had seen him in the morning before the fast began, and Gandhi had said not a word. The only member of the government he told was Amrit Kaur. Amrit confided to a member of the British High Commission’s staff that she thought it would really be the fast unto death at last. The aged Mahatma could not hope to live for more than five or six days without sustenance. Ostensibly, Gandhi was fasting to stop Hindus attacking Muslims in Delhi. ‘Other sources suggest that the fast is due to the bad state of relations between Nehru and Patel which they say have been worse during the last week than ever before,’ noted the British High Commissioner. ‘Gandhi hopes that his fast will rally mass public opinion to Nehru’s more liberal views.’21
Gandhi slept on a cot in Birla House while the public filed past to observe him.22 The Mountbattens were in Bikaner for another princely visit, though the Maharaja cancelled the state banquet out of respect for Gandhi’s fast. When they returned to Delhi, Edwina took Dickie with her to visit Gandhi for the first time. Previously, the Mahatma had always come to see him. ‘It takes a fast to bring you to me!’ exclaimed Gandhi with a twinkle in his eye.23 Though his sense of humour remained, Gandhi seemed so weak that, as she left, Edwina wept. Jawahar also came to visit Gandhi that day; he, too, could not hold back tears. When he heard a crowd of refugees outside Birla House chanting, ‘Let Gandhi die!’ Jawahar’s sorrow turned to fury. ‘How dare you say these words!’ he shouted, running at the protesters. ‘Come and kill me first!’ The cowards scattered.24
Patel had been unmovable on the question of unfreezing the 550 million rupees that India still owed to Pakistan, and Nehru was unwilling to challenge his cabinet on the issue. Mountbatten claimed that he had told Gandhi the situation, at which point Gandhi offered to fast. ‘And they were terribly upset that he’d agreed to this – terribly upset that he’d done it with me and not with them,’ Mountbatten remembered. ‘And he got them absolutely by the short hairs; they had to give up.’25 This latter-day reminiscence of Mountbatten’s is contradicted by his own report of 3 February 1948, in which he admits that he, too, had only been told about Gandhi’s fast at the last minute, that the reason for it ‘will, I think, forever remain a mystery’, and that Gandhi had come up with the scheme ‘without consulting me’.26 Still, it is true that, during one of Nehru’s visits, Gandhi asked him to pay Pakistan its due. Without hesitation, Nehru ordered it to be done. The cabinet, though reluctant, could not disobey a direct request from the ailing Mahatma, whose political influence at last matched his moral influence.27
As it had in Calcutta, Gandhi’s fast brought results from the people at large as well as the government. Representatives from across Delhi sent assurances that Muslim life, property and religion in Delhi would be respected. Nehru brought the messages to the Mahatma’s cot and, on 18 January, Gandhi gave up his fast. Together with the Muslim minister Abul Kalam Azad, Nehru took turns to feed the old man fruit juice.
Quickly Gandhi recovered his strength, but not his optimism. ‘India will virtually become a prison if the present conditions continue,’ he said on breaking his fast. ‘It may be better that you allow me to continue my fast and if God wills it He will call me.’28 Two days later, he was addressing his daily prayer meeting in the grounds of Birla House when a bomb exploded only yards away. Both Jawahar and Edwina rushed to the scene, but found Gandhi unhurt and unflustered, declaring that he had merely thought the army must have been at work nearby.29 Edwina congratulated him on his cool response, but Gandhi was modest. ‘If somebody fired at me point blank and I faced his bullet with a smile, repeating the name of Rama in my heart,’ Gandhi told her, ‘I should be deserving of congratulations.’30
The bomb-thrower was a young Hindu refugee from West Punjab, caught in the act of lighting the fuse; he also had a live grenade on him. The police suspected that he was not acting alone. Rumours were rife about an extreme Hindu nationalist group from Bombay who saw Gandhi as the betrayer of Hinduism, and who had been inflamed by his efforts to save Muslim lives. Yet Gandhi refused any extra security at prayer meetings – except for demanding that every Hindu or Sikh brought a Muslim friend.31
On 23 January, the Mountbattens left for a tour of Bhopal, Nagpur and Madras. The atmosphere remained tense, and in Amritsar a wild protest trampled the national flag into the dirt. Three days after the incident, on 29 January, Nehru spoke in Amritsar district, his voice shaking with passionate anger as he denounced the action as traitorous, and communal organizations such as the RSS as unfit for India’s greatness. A non-Muslim member of his audience was arrested for carrying two hand grenades.32 On the morning of 30 January, Margaret Bourke-White went to interview Gandhi, and found him deeply depressed. ‘I can no longer live in darkness and madness,’ he murmured. ‘I cannot continue.’ Later, he was visited by Betty Hutheesing, Indira Gandhi and Padmaja Naidu, bringing with them Indira’s four-year-old son, Rajiv. While the adults talked and joked, Rajiv played with some jasmine flowers that had been brought for Gandhi. He wrapped them around the old man’s feet, but was stopped with a gentle hand. ‘You must not do that,’ said the Mahatma. ‘One only puts flowers around dead people’s feet.’33
That afternoon, Gandhi shared a meal of goat’s milk, vegetables and oranges with Vallabhbhai and Maniben Patel. He got up and, supported by his grand-nieces Abha and Manu, walked down the colonnade that ran from outside his ground-floor quarters to the large and beautiful back garden of Birla House. He was about ten minutes late for the prayer meeting that day, and a crowd of around five hundred had gathered. As he walked through the bowing attendees towards his platform at the centre of the garden, a young man stepped out and pressed his palms together, with the traditional Hindi greeting, ‘Namaste.’ Manu caught his hand to move him out of Gandhi’s way, but he pushed her over. The man looked Gandhi in the eyes, pulled out a Beretta pistol, and fired three shots pointblank into the Mahatma’s chest. ‘He Ram’ – ‘Oh Rama’ – Gandhi was heard to say as he sank to the ground.
Immediately, there was chaos. As Gandhi was cradled by his devotees and carried back to the house, the assassin was seized and pummelled by thirty-two-year-old diplomatic officer Herbert Reiner of Springdale, Connecticut.34 A doctor was found within minutes, but he was no use. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was dead.
Crimson blood spread across Gandhi’s white shawl, and the news spread through Delhi nearly as fast. Betty Hutheesing had gone on to a friend’s house, and asked her M
uslim driver to take her home. The driver began to tremble and could hardly start the car. ‘My God, I hope it wasn’t a Muslim,’ he said.35 It was not. The murderer was Nathuram Godse, a Bombay Brahmin and member of the fundamentalist Hindu Mahasabha, an organization linked to the same RSS that Patel had recently endorsed so glowingly. He and his co-conspirator, Narayan Apte, had bonded over a shared hatred of Muslims, and love of detective novels: Apte preferred Agatha Christie, while Godse’s favourite was Erle Stanley Gardner.36 Godse was unpenitent for the murder of Gandhi, and asked that no mercy be shown to him. After a trial a few months later, he would be hanged.
Nehru’s niece, Nayantara Pandit, had been having tea with Indira Gandhi when they heard the news. They too rushed to Birla House. Shortly after they arrived, someone whispered, ‘Jawaharlal,’ and Indira’s father walked in. He had heard that Mohandas had been shot, but did not realize until he saw the body that his guru was dead. He knelt by Gandhi’s side, tears running down his face as he clutched the Mahatma’s lifeless hand. ‘I had never seen him so grief-stricken before’, Nayantara wrote to her mother, Nan Pandit, ‘like a lost child.’37 She was moved to note that her uncle, to whom it fell to lead the world’s mourning, had to sublimate his personal grief to the needs of his nation. ‘When Mamu [Uncle] rose to his feet he had regained complete self-control,’ she noted. ‘Those who could bear to look at his face during those days saw a strained white mask through which only the eyes revealed stark anguish.’38 Nayantara’s aunt, Betty, remembered going into the quiet room and noticing Jawahar standing in the corner. ‘His face was drawn and tortured as it had not been even when our father died’, she wrote. ‘I was quite controlled, or stunned, until then, but the agony which showed so clearly on Bhai’s face made me break down.’39
Indian Summer Page 36