— Jinnah of Pakistan (Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 1984)
— Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny (Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 1996)
— Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India (Oxford University Press, New York, 2006)
Zakaria, Rafiq, ed. A Study of Nehru (1959; revised edition, Times of India Publications, New Delhi, 1960)
Ziegler, Philip. Mountbatten: The Official Biography (Collins, London, 1985)
— Mountbatten Revisited (University of Texas, Austin, TX, 1995)
Zuckerman, Solly. Monkeys, Men and Missiles: An Autobiography 1946–88 (Collins, London, 1988)
FILMOGRAPHY
Brief Encounter (dir. David Lean, 1945)
Caesar and Cleopatra (dir. Gabriel Pascal, 1945)
Gandhi (dir. Richard Attenborough, 1982)
In Which We Serve (dir. David Lean and Noël Coward, 1942)
Jinnah (dir. Jamil Dehlavi, 1998)
My Favorite Brunette (dir. Elliott Nugent, 1947)
British Pathé News Archive
‘Mountbatten’, Secret History, Channel 4 Television, 1995
A NOTE ON NAMES
Indian names and titles can be confusing for foreigners. For instance, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi can be referred to as Mohan, Mohandas, Mohan Das, Mohandasbhai, Gandhi, Gandhiji, Mahatma, or Bapu, and many further combinations are possible.
Jawaharlal Nehru was often called ‘Pandit Nehru’ as a mark of his caste as a Kashmiri Pandit Brahmin; he attempted to prohibit the use of this title, but without success. Gandhi encouraged people to call him Bapu, meaning ‘father’, and was also widely known as ‘Mahatma’, a religious title meaning ‘great soul’. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the first Governor General of Pakistan, is often called the Quaid-e-Azam, or ‘great leader’.
Hindu and Sikh princes were usually known as Raja (king) or Maharaja (great king); Muslim princes as Nawab. There are many exceptions: the Nizam of Hyderabad, Gaekwar of Baroda and Jam Sahib of Nawanagar were among those who enjoyed unique titles. The princes’ chief ministers were usually known as Dewan.
The suffix –ji, which implies affectionate respect, is affixed liberally to names or titles – so Jawaharlal Nehru could be called Jawaharlalji, Nehruji or Panditji. The suffix –bhai, meaning ‘brother’, can similarly be added. Some names incorporate it, such as that of Vallabhbhai Patel; Jinnah’s surname was originally Jinnahbhai. The feminine version is –ben or –bai. Some Hindu women, such as Kasturba Gandhi, adopt the suffix –bai to their first name on marriage, and –ba when they become the matriarch of the household.
British names are equally confusing. Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten was known to his family and friends as Dickie. To everyone else he was His Serene Highness Prince Louis of Battenberg (1900–14), Lord Louis Mountbatten (1914–46), Viscount Mountbatten of Burma (1946–7), and eventually Earl Mountbatten of Burma (1947 onwards). The second of those titles was correctly shortened to Lord Louis, and the third and fourth to Lord Mountbatten. Mountbatten’s personal staff persisted in addressing him as Lord Louis until the day he died.
A woman who marries a prince or the son of a peer takes her husband’s title and first name, meaning that Mountbatten’s wife Edwina was generally referred to as Lady Louis. (She was never ‘Lady Edwina’; that would have denoted the daughter of a duke, marquess or earl. Edwina was only the daughter of a baron, Lord Mount Temple, and was therefore known before her marriage as the Hon. Edwina Ashley.) After 1946, Edwina would correctly have been addressed as Lady Mountbatten.
For the sake of consistency, all the people in this book have been referred to by their last name or first name, depending loosely on whether they are being viewed in a public or private context. Titles have been used occasionally for variety. Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s first name has not been used, for his close friends and even his sister never called him Mohammad. They referred to him as Jinnah or, occasionally, Jin. Sikhs, all of whom bear the surname Singh if they are male and Kaur if they are female, and Muslims who bear the common surname Khan, have usually been referred to by their first names.
GLOSSARY
achkan a long-sleeved coat, worn by men over trousers
Angrez English
ashram a village-style religious community and retreat
bagh a garden or park
Bania Gandhi’s sub-caste, within the Vaishya caste: traders. Hard-bargaining salesmen may be described as ‘banias’ in a mildly derogatory sense
Bapu Father; often used by his acolytes to refer to Gandhi
bhai brother
brahmacharya chastity. A person who practises brahmacharya is a brahmachari
Brahmin the first caste: priests and academics
chaprasi a bearer
communal used as an adjective in India to describe a prejudice based on one’s own ‘community’ identity, which may be defined by religion or caste. Muslim-Sikh rioting may be called ‘communal rioting’; a protest by Untouchables against caste-Hindus may similarly be described as ‘communal politics’. The British use of the word, to mean ‘shared’, is not common in the subcontinent
coolie a porter or manual labourer; used in a derogatory sense by Europeans to describe any Indian
crore ten million, or 100 lakhs. Written in India as 1,00,00,000
Dalit ‘The oppressed’, ‘broken’, or ‘crushed’; modern term for Untouchables
darshan the viewing of a sacred object
Dewan a prime minister in an Indian princely state
dupatta a long scarf worn by women
gaddi throne (literally, cushion)
goonda gangster, hooligan
gurdwara a Sikh temple
Harijan ‘child of God’; Gandhi’s term for Untouchables
hartal a day of prayer and fasting, functioning as a general strike
Jai Hind ‘Victory to India’: a slogan of Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army, later adopted by more mainstream Indian politicians.
jatha a band of fighting Sikhs
kaffir Islamic term for a non-Muslim
karma destiny; the credit built up in one life that determines one’s station in the next incarnation
khadi homespun cloth
ki jai ‘victory to’: shouted by Indian crowds as English-speaking crowds might shout ‘three cheers for X!’ or ‘long live X!’
kirpan a blade, which can be anything between a small ceremonial knife and a sword, carried by all Sikhs
Kshatriya the second caste: warriors and rulers
kurta a long shirt worn over trousers. The women’s version is the kurti
lakh one hundred thousand. Written in India as 1,00,000
lassi a drink made from yoghurt and water, sold on most street corners
lathi a bamboo cane with a metal tip, used by Indian policemen to control crowds loya jirga inter-tribal council, made up of the representatives of several tribes. Each tribe has its own jirga (council)
maidan a grass-covered open space, parade ground or green; sometimes a race-course or battlefield
mamu uncle
masjid a mosque
memsahib contraction of ‘madam sahib’, applied to European women
purna swaraj complete self-rule
raj rule, as in government; usually used in Britain to refer to the British administration of India between 1858–1947
sahib equivalent to ‘sir’; used to respected figures, and sometimes used to denote any European
satyagraha ‘truth-force’; Gandhi’s term for passive resistance or militant non-violence. A person who practises satyagraha is a satyagrahi
sepoy Indian soldier serving in the British army
sherwani a long coat worn over trousers in northern India and central Asia, associated often with Islamic dress
Sudra the fourth caste: farmers and manual labourers
suttee, sati Hindu female sacrifice; specifically, the burning of a widow on the funeral pyre of her husband
swaraj self-rule
thuggee Hindu cult devoted to the goddess Kali, implicated in murders and robbery during the nineteenth century
Untouchable a Hindu person born outside the four castes, considered unclean by orthodox Hindu society; also known at various stages as the Depressed Classes, Scheduled Castes, Harijans, and Dalits
Vaishya the third caste: merchants
zindabad ‘long live’, as in ‘Pakistan zindabad’ – ‘long live Pakistan’
PLACES
Some place names changed after the transfer of power to make their spelling more Indian, though a non-Indian English speaker may be more likely to pronounce them correctly by referring to the old spellings (Poona is now spelled Pune, but still pronounced ‘Poona’). Many more were changed in the late 1990s and 2000s as part of a controversial Hindu nationalist movement. For instance, Bombay, named after the Portuguese Bom Bahia (Good Bay), has been renamed Mumbai after an obscure local Hindu goddess, Mumba Devi. The campaign has lately begun to propose renaming cities which presently have Muslim names with Hindu names: Allahabad would become Prayag, and Ahmedabad would become Karnavati. Because this story is set mainly in the 1940s, the names current then have been used throughout.
Bangalore Bengaluru
Baroda Vadodara
Benares Varanasi
Bombay Mumbai
Calcutta Kolkata
Cawnpore Kanpur
Dacca Dhaka (Bangladesh)
Jullundur Jalandhar
Jumna River Yamuna River
Madras Chennai
Mysore Mysuru
Ooty (Ootacamund) Udhagamangalam
Oudh Awadh
Poona Pune
Simla Shimla
Trivandrum Thiruvananthapuram
United Provinces Uttar Pradesh
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