69 Ibid, p. 209. Rumours of a viceroyalty had occasionally attached themselves to DM before – Sir Mirza Ismail, at one time Prime Minister to the Nizam of Hyderabad, claimed to have suggested it to him in the early- to mid-1940s, and CRA had been considering him since January. Sir Mirza Ismail to Walter Monckton, 10 March 1947. WMP: 29, ff 88–9; French, Liberty or Death, p. 276.
70 CRA cited in Wheeler-Bennett, Friends, Enemies and Sovereigns, p. 149.
71 Marion Crawford, The Little Princesses (Cassell & Co, London, 1950), pp. 59–60.
72 Channon, Chips, 21 January 1941, p. 287.
73 DM to Sir Miles Lampson, cited in Pimlott, The Queen, p. 96.
74 King George VI to DM, 10 August 1944. Cited in Bradford, George VI, p. 557; Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 308.
75 Pimlott, The Queen, pp. 97–100.
76 Philip to DM, cited in Bradford, George VI, p. 557; Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 308.
77 CRA cited in Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers, p. 209.
78 DM tells an extremely colourful version of this story in Collins & Lapierre, Mountbatten and the Partition of India, pp. 10–11.
79 CRA cited in Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers, p. 210.
80 He had originally been offered a mere barony – actually a step down in precedence from being the son of a marquess, which he already was. Moreover, the fact that it was junior to the viscountcies offered to A.V. Alexander and Bernard Montgomery was received as an open snub. He was upgraded to a viscount on protesting. Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 310.
81 Anonymous friend cited in Hough, Edwina, p. 183. A letter from DM to Jo Hollis, written on 16 December 1946, confirms this view: DM asks that his demotion be given the least possible publicity, and writes of the Chiefs of Staff that ‘I hope they will be gracious enough to allow me to retain the actual parchments on which the Commissions are written as souvenirs.’ TNA: CAB 127/25.
82 DM told Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre in the 1970s that he had ‘always had a very curious, subconscious desire to be Viceroy’. DM cited in Collins & Lapierre, Mountbatten and the Partition of India, p. 7. Henry Hodson added more points to the list of DM’s objections, including the canard that DM was granted plenipotentiary powers by CRA, but these are unsupported by the documentary evidence. Hodson, The Great Divide, p. 201.
83 DM to CRA, 20 December 1946. MP: MB1/E5.
84 DM to CRA, 3 January 1947. MP: MB1/D246.
85 DM to CRA, 7 January 1947. MP: MB1/D246. DM had mentioned in passing the issue of ‘a definite and specified date’ on 3 January, but the letter of 7 January contained his first open demand. See also MP: MB1/E5.
86 CRA to Lascelles, 18 February 1947. TNA: PREM 8/558.
87 CRA cited in Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers, p. 208.
88 CRA to DM, 9 January 1947. MP: MB1/E5.
89 DM to CRA, 12 January 1947. MP: MB1/E5.
90 CRA to DM, 16 January 1947. MP: MB1/E5.
91 DM to Sir Stafford Cripps, 26 January 1947. MP: MB1/E5.
92 Report of Sir Frederick Burrows, in Wavell to Secretary of State for India, 16 February 1947. MP: MB1/D246.
93 Wavell to India Office, 17 February 1947. MP: MB1/D246.
94 CRA to Sir Alan Lascelles, 18 February 1947. TNA: PREM 8/558.
95 CRA to Sir Alan Lascelles, 22 February 1947. TNA: PREM 8/558.
96 CRA to DM, March 1947 [no day dated]. MP: MB1/D254; Ziegler, Mountbatten, pp. 358–9.
97 MP: MB1/E37, MB1/E38.
98 Admiral Sir Reginald Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax to DM, 22 February 1947. MP: MB1/E37.
99 DM to Admiral Sir Reginald Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, 1 March 1947. MP: MB1/E37.
100 At the beginning of March 1947 JN had been sent an unsigned and undated official memorandum from India to London, saying that these files were being removed or destroyed. JN wrote to Wavell on 6 March. ‘I do not know how far this information is correct. I hope it is not so because these records must contain information of great historical value and they should not be destroyed or transferred to other hands. May I beg of you to inquire into this matter and to stop any such vandalism of valuable material?’ JN to Wavell, 6 March 1947. SWJN (2), vol 2, p. 275. Wavell replied on 15 March that the records in question possessed no historical interest. Anything else was being transferred to the UK High Commission in India. JN replied to him that he would like eminent historians to be put in charge of such an effort, and wondered why the UK High Commission should have any right to them. Wavell left soon after and never replied. See SWJN (2), vol 2, pp. 276, 282–6; ToP, vol X, p. 8.
101 Brendan Bracken cited in Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, pp. 80–1.
102 DM’s valet, Charles Smith, alleged that JN had recommended DM for the post of Viceroy (Smith, Fifty Years with Mountbatten, p. 80), and Stanley Wolpert claimed that JN’s friend Krishna Menon ‘tirelessly urged’ CRA to appoint DM (Wolpert, Shameful Flight, p. 129). Neither AP nor TNA offers any evidence to back this up.
103 Statement dated 22 February 1947. SWJN (2), vol 2, p. 44.
104 JN to Menon, 27 February 1947. SWJN (2), vol 2, p. 55.
105 Ibid, pp. 57–8. JN seemed to warm to Ismay: on 5 August 1947, he wrote to DM about the personal staff that the latter would retain as Governor General. He mentioned specifically that ‘I am glad that Lord Ismay will be staying on.’ JN to DM, 5 August 1947. SWJN (2), vol 3, p. 39. Krishna Menon had indeed met DM already, through EA. EA and Krishna had been friends even before the war, when the former was a borough councillor for St Pancras and an editor at Penguin Books. Hough, Edwina, p. 178.
106 Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, p. 69.
107 DM’s own claim that he had been given ‘plenipotentiary powers’ by CRA is neither documented officially, nor borne out by subsequent events. However, previous Viceroys had not even been able to see MKG without authorization from London, and even the limited powers he had may be regarded as having allowed him more agency than his predecessors.
108 Pimlott, The Queen, pp. 100–1.
109 Philip cited in ibid; p. 89; Basil Boothroyd, Philip: An Informal Biography (Longman, London, 1971), p. 54.
110 Coward, Diaries, 18 March 1947, p. 83.
111 DM to Lieutenant-Commander Peter Howes, cited in Smith, Fifty Years with Mountbatten, p. 77. See also Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 359.
II. THE END
10. OPERATION MADHOUSE
1 Woodrow Wyatt cited in Hough, Edwina, p. 185.
2 DM cited in ibid, p. 186.
3 EA cited in Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, p. 382. EA also wrote in her diary that she would rather be doing relief work in Europe with Marjorie Brecknock. Ibid, pp. 383–4.
4 Collins & Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight, pp. 76–7.
5 Murphy, Last Viceroy, p. 243.
6 Collins & Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight, pp. 87–8; Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 353. The novelist Salman Rushdie listed DM’s attributes as being ‘his inexorable ticktock, his soldier’s knife that could cut subcontinents in three, and his wife who ate chicken breasts secretly behind a locked lavatory door.’ Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (Jonathan Cape, London, 1981), p. 65. Collins & Lapierre claim EA had two terriers, but most other sources and photographs suggest that EA took only one to India.
7 Collins & Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight, pp. 86–7; see also DM cited in Collins & Lapierre, Mountbatten and the Partition of India, p. 18. Wavell, Viceroy’s Journal, 22 March 1947, p. 432 gives a less dramatic account of this meeting.
8 Close, Attlee, Wavell, Mountbatten, p. 10, agrees.
9 Wavell, Viceroy’s Journal, 2 December 1946, p. 389. During the Cabinet Mission the previous year, Lord Pethick-Lawrence had suggested the same scheme to CRA as the only serious option if open rebellion against British rule broke out. AP: MS Attlee dep. 37, ff 49–50. There is one piece of supposedly contemporary evidence to support the ‘Madhouse’ name: Shahid Hamid’s diary from 26 June 1947 notes, ‘Orders have been issued that India Command Joint Operation instructions No. 2 “Madhouse”
is to be destroyed.’ Hamid, Disastrous Twilight, p. 193. Attention has been drawn to the unreliability of Hamid’s memoir elsewhere in this book.
10 CRA cited in Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers, p. 209.
11 Corfield, The Princely India I Knew, pp. 152–3.
12 CRA to King George VI, 15 March 1947. RA: PS/GVI/C 337/08.
13 Pethick-Lawrence to DM, 12 April 1947. ToP, vol X, p. 219.
14 Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, 22 March 1947, pp. 39–40.
15 British Pathé News Archive, film 2150.10. See also Hamid, Disastrous Twilight, p. 149.
16 DM cited in Collins & Lapierre, Mountbatten and the Partition of India, pp. 24–5; see also Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, p. 81.
17 DM cited in The Times, 25 March 1947, p. 4; see also Mountbatten, Time Only to Look Forward, p. 3.
18 Holman, ‘Lady Mountbatten’s Story’, part 5; Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, 24 March 1947, p. 42.
19 Moon, Divide and Quit, pp. 77–9, 288. The official death toll for March was 2049, but Moon called this a significant underestimate. See also T.W. Rees, Report of the Punjab Boundary Force, AAS: Mss Eur F274/70.
20 W. Christie, Chief Commissioner Delhi, to A. E. Porter, Secretary to the Home Department, Government of India. 24 March 1947. NAI: Home Dept, Political Branch, F. No. 5/7/47 – Poll. (I).
21 The Times, 25 March 1947, p. 3.
22 W. Christie to A. E. Porter, 25 March 1947. NAI: Home Dept, Political Branch, F. No. 5/7/47 – Poll. (I).
23 The Times, 29 March 1947, p. 3.
24 Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, p. 41. DM wrote to both of them on the night of his arrival in India.
25 Ibid; 25 March 1947, pp. 43–4; ToP, vol X, pp. 10–11.
26 ToP, vol X, p. 17.
27 Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, 25 March 1947, p. 45; ToP, vol X, p. 91.
28 According to a famous story about Patel, in 1909 he had been in court when he was passed a telegram saying that his wife had died. Without changing his expression, he skimmed it, put it in his pocket, and continued with the case. French, Liberty or Death, pp. 51, 279.
29 All these quotes are from DM’s notes on the meeting, 24 March 1947. SWJN (2), vol 2, p. 73; ToP, vol X, pp. 11–13.
30 The Times, 28 March 1947, p. 4.
31 EA to the East India Association, 13 October 1948, in Asiatic Review, vol xlv, no 161 (January 1949), p. 440.
32 Ibid.
33 Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit cited in Masson, Edwina, p. 244.
34 Hamid, Disastrous Twilight, p. 153. DM’s official biographer, Philip Ziegler, wrote that EA’s ‘close relationship with Nehru did not start until the Mountbattens were on the verge of leaving India’. Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 365.
35 These photographs may be seen in SWJN (2) vol 2; opposite pp. 81 and 513; Illustrated Weekly of India, 13 April 1947, p. 17; see also Wolpert, Nehru, p. 384; Hamid, Disastrous Twilight, p. 152.
36 EA to JN, March 1957; JN to EA, 12 March 1957, both cited in Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, pp. 473–4.
37 Viceroy’s Personal Report no. 1, 31 March 1947 (second draft). MP: MB1/D83. A very similar draft was finally sent on 2 April. ToP, vol X, pp. 90–4.
38 Stephens, Pakistan, p. 125.
39 Viceroy’s notes, 31 March 1947. ToP, vol X, pp. 54–5; MP: MB1/D4.
40 Hamid, Disastrous Twilight, p. 156.
41 Linlithgow to Leopold Amery, 15 February 1943. TNA: PREM 4/49/3, ff 612–3; Wavell to Leopold Amery, 12 July 1944. TNA: PREM 4/49/3, f 451.
42 Unnamed Congressman cited in Wolpert, A New History of India, p. 348; see also Jones, Tumult in India, p. 79.
43 ToP, vol X, p. 69.
44 Ibid, pp. 70–1.
45 Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, p. 61; ToP, vol X, pp. 197–8.
46 DM, ‘Reflections on Mr Jinnah 29 years later’, MP: MB1/K137A.
47 See Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity, p. 127.
48 DM, ‘Reflections on Mr Jinnah 29 years later’.
49 ‘psychopathic case’: Viceroy’s staff meeting, 11 April 1947. ToP, vol X, p. 190; and Viceroy’s Personal Report no 3, in ibid, p. 300. All cited in Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, p. 82. DM was not the only person to describe MAJ in such terms. Sir Terence Shone, the British High Commissioner in India, wrote on 16 April 1947 that ‘Jinnah appeared to be quite unbending in his insistence on Pakistan which, indeed, savoured of the psychopathic.’ ToP, vol X, p. 279. American journalist George E. Jones was among those who described his ‘repressed intensity [which] borders on the psychotic.’ Jones, Tumult in India, p. 114.
50 ‘demagogue’, ‘reprehensible’: Viceroy’s Personal Report no. 4, 24 April 1947, ToP, vol X, p. 408; ‘hysterical’: Viceroy’s Personal Report no. 17, 16 August 1947, ToP, vol XII, p. 761; ‘Trotskyist’: Viceroy’s Personal Report no 11, 4 July 1947, ToP, vol XI, p. 896.
51 Viceroy’s Interview no 35, 5–6 April 1946. ToP, vol X, p. 138.
52 Viceroy’s Personal Report no 3, ToP, vol X, p. 299; Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, p. 58.
53 EA to Isobel Cripps, 20–27 April 1947. MP: MB1/Q19.
54 Fatimah Jinnah cited in Viceroy’s Personal Report No. 5, 1 May 1947, ToP, vol X, p. 540.
55 MKG himself passed the reports of roasting alive to DM. MKG to DM, 7 April 1947. ToP, vol X, p. 146.
56 The Times, 7 April 1947, p. 3.
57 Ibid, 2 April 1947, p. 3.
58 Viceroy’s Personal Interview no 41, 8 April 1947. ToP, vol X, p. 158.
59 ToP, vol X, pp 297–8; Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, p. 61.
60 ToP, vol X, pp. 212–3.
61 ToP, vol X, p. 405.
62 ToP, vol X, pp. 183–5; 320–4.
63 Viceroy’s Personal Report no. 4, 24 April 1947, ibid, p. 405.
64 ToP, vol X, p. 398; Das, End of the British-Indian Empire, vol 1, p. 38.
65 EA to Isobel Cripps, 20–27 April 1947. MP: MB1/Q19.
66 ToP, vol X, p. 398. DM told an embellished version of this story in Collins & Lapierre, Mountbatten and the Partition of India, pp. 37–8.
67 Ismay cited in Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, p. 117.
68 The Times, 29 March 1947, p. 3.
69 Illustrated Weekly of India, 4 May 1947, Late News Supplement, p. 8; The Times, 29 April 1947, p. 4. The figure was given as 60,000 in the official ‘Notes on Her Excellency’s Tour of the N.W.F.P. and Punjab’; and later changed in that document to 150,000. MP: MB1/Q79. DM himself estimated 100,000, and described them as ‘militant Pathans advancing on Government House’. MP: MB2/N14.
70 Collins & Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight, p. 146. Shahid Hamid claimed that the demonstration was organized by Caroe and had been friendly from the start, but this is contradicted by news reports of the day. Hamid, Disastrous Twilight, p. 168. See also ToP, vol X, p. 535.
71 The Times, 29 April 1947, p. 4.
72 Hodson, The Great Divide, p. 286.
11. A BARREL OF GUNPOWDER
1 The Times, 30 April, p. 30; Illustrated Weekly of India, 11 May 1947, p. 14; MP: MB1/Q79; ToP, vol X, p. 536.
2 Corfield, The Princely India I Knew, p. 151, 154.
3 Burrows cited in Viceroy’s Personal Report no 5, 1 May 1947. ToP, vol X, p. 539.
4 CP: CHUR 2/43B, f 151.
5 MAJ cited in The Times, 2 May 1947, p. 4; ToP, vol X, p. 543.
6 Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, p. 59.
7 Viceroy’s Interview no 41, 8 April 1947. ToP, vol X, p. 160.
8 EA to Isobel Cripps, 20–27 April 1947. MP: MB1/Q19.
9 Illustrated Weekly of India, 11 May 1947, p. 15.
10 EA cited in Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, p. 398.
11 Viceroy’s Personal Report No. 5, 1 May 1947, ToP, vol X, p. 537.
12 Report on visits of observation to refugee camps and hospitals. MP: MB1/Q79.
13 MP: MB1/Q79.
14 Statesman (daily edition), Calcutta, 2 May 1947,
p. 5; Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, p. 82.
15 Seton, Panditji, p. 133.
16 EA to Lieutenant Colonel K.C. Packman, 1 May 1947. MP: MB1/Q78; ToP, vol X, p. 839.
17 MP: MB1/Q80.
18 Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, 24 March 1947, p. 43.
19 Lady Pamela Hicks, recorded by Mr B. R. Nanda, 14 October 1971, p. 5, NML: Oral History Project; MP: MB1/K202.
20 EA to Dowager Marchioness of Reading, 17 April 1947. MP: MB1/Q61.
21 Viceroy’s Personal Report No. 3, 17 April 1947, ToP, vol X, p. 303.
22 Hough, Edwina, p. 187. The suggestion sometimes made that DM persuaded Congress to concede Pakistan to MAJ is misleading – both Congress and the British government had realized that they would have to concede to some extent following the Muslim League’s strong showing in the elections of 1945–6. See Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol 1, p. 342.
23 Viceroy’s Personal Report No. 5, 1 May 1947. ToP, vol X, p. 540.
24 Hindustan Times cited in Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, p. 84.
25 MP: MB1/D4.
26 MKG to Doon Campbell, 5 May 1947. Cited in Bose, My Days with Gandhi, p. 187.
27 Agatha Harrison to EA, 29 April 1947. MP: MB1/Q26. Harrison’s emphasis.
28 DM speaking in ‘Gandhi’ by Francis Watson & Maurice Brown, radio programme, episode 4 (‘The Last Phase’), 16 December 1956, Benthall Papers, CSAS, Box 2, file 2; Viceroy’s Personal Report No, 6, 8 May 1947, ToP, vol X, p. 681.
29 The Times, 5 May 1947, p. 4.
30 Pubby, Shimla Then and Now, p. 63; Nigel Woodyatt, Under Ten Viceroys (Herbert Jenkins Ltd, London, 1922), pp. 51–2.
31 MKG cited in Pubby, Shimla Then and Now, p. 89.
32 Minutes of Viceroy’s Fourth Staff Meeting, 28 March 1947. ToP, vol X, pp. 37–8.
33 ToP, vol X, p. 228.
34 Ibid, p. 335; for details of the Simla Conference, see Hodson, The Great Divide, pp. 120–9.
35 ToP, vol X, p. 373. ‘I asked Nehru to come as my guest, as I thought he was nearing a breakdown from overwork,’ DM explained to London. Viceroy’s Personal Report No 7, 15 May 1947. ToP, vol X, p. 836.
36 JN to Indira Gandhi, 1 July 1945. Gandhi & Nehru, Two Alone, Two Together, p. 511. JN had been imprisoned for almost three years, his longest single internment.
Indian Summer Page 47