by B Krishna
The Congress was a divided house, considerably weak in comparison with the League under Jinnah’s sole spokesmanship. Azad, as president, had, on his own, assured the mission of Congress acceptance of the plan. He favoured a federal government “with fully autonomous Provinces with residuary powers vested in the units themselves”.9 He feared that “the creation of Pakistan was to weaken the position of the Muslims in the sub-continent of India”.10
Gandhi favoured the mission plan since it preserved the unity of India, irrespective of the cost to the non-Muslims. Patel told Wavell that Gandhi “put forward all the arguments for acceptance, but had failed to convince the Working Committee”.11 Whereas Wavell told Arthur Henderson, under secretary of state: “Nehru was ready to give the Mission Plan a chance.”12 Opposed to all of them, Patel, records Wavell, thought that “the proposed solution was ‘worse than Pakistan’, and he could not recommend it to Congress”.13
As interim president of the Congress in July 1946, Nehru burst the mission bubble by declaring that Assam could opt out of Group C from the outset. It was a blow to the mission plan; no less it shattered Jinnah’s dream. He reacted like a wounded tiger, and declared “war” on the Hindus—starting with the “Great Calcutta Killing” in mid-August. Yet, the mission wanted Wavell to manage the formation of an interim government, unconcerned about whether it would work or not.
Who could have helped Wavell in that? His choice fell on Patel. He felt that none other than Patel was capable of getting it done. He got the secretary of state’s approval for approaching him. In his letter to him, Wavell quoted what an “unimpeachable source” had told him: “If Congress were asked to form an Interim Government, Patel would insist on their agreeing . . . convinced that the Congress must enter the Government to prevent chaos spreading in the country.”14 Thus, the interim government was formed on 2 September 1946 with Patel’s support, but without Jinnah’s League as a participant. Patel, thus, secured a potent weapon in keeping Jinnah out in the cold, with the disadvantage of losing ground for a fight from within the government and even losing the confidence of many Muslims.
It was not in the interest of the British to let Jinnah be thrown into isolation. They wanted him to remain alive and kicking, and counterbalance the Congress. Wavell, therefore, came to Jinnah’s rescue for the second time since the Simla Conference. He asked Nehru, “Would you mind if I invite Jinnah once more and persuade him to join the Interim Government?”15 Nehru’s consent proved to be the nemesis of the Congress since Jinnah was not asked to first cancel his “Direct Action” resolution. Patel had, therefore, correctly told Wavell as early as 12 June: “Jinnah would only use his position in the Interim Government for purely communal and disruptive purposes and to break up India.”16 How prophetic he proved! Jinnah’s aide, Ghazanfar Ali, had stated: “We are going into the Interim Government to get a foothold to fight for our cherished goal of Pakistan . . . The Interim Government is one of the fronts of the Direct Action campaign.”17
With the League’s entry, the interim government plunged into a deep crisis. The position of the Congress was very much weakened. Patel still preferred giving a last-ditch fight, both to Jinnah and the British. He told the former, “The sword will be met with the sword”, which, however, was not acceptable to Gandhi nor to Nehru. He accused the British of “repeatedly . . . giving way to Jinnah in order to save his face”.18 He publicly declared: “If the Muslim League members were allowed to remain in the Interim Government, the Congress members would resign”,19 in full realisation that Cripps and Pethick-Lawrence believed that “the cooperation of the Congress was vital”.20
This time Patel was outmanoeuvred by Attlee with his call to Nehru and Jinnah to visit him in London. Patel was against Nehru’s going, as he smelt a rat. However, Nehru did go, persuaded by his faith in Attlee’s good intentions. A completely disappointed Nehru returned, as Patel commented, like “a broken reed”. Even the Congress Working Committee declared that Attlee’s verdict over Assam was “full of peril for the future”. According to it, Assam would form part of Group C, along with Muslim majority Bengal, at least for a period of five years; and that Muslim Bengal could frame Hindu Assam’s constitution. And thus, the Congress lost its final battle against Jinnah. From then onwards events moved fast to a climax, when, on 20 February, Attlee’s policy statement virtually conceded Pakistan to Jinnah. With that, Patel moved away from Gandhi to play an assertive role to save the rest of India. That lay in his asking for a division of Punjab; also of Bengal and Assam by implication.
Mountbatten, the new viceroy, arrived in India on 24 March to implement Attlee’s mandate: to transfer power by a date not later than June 1948. But he saw India sliding fast into anarchy. India, to him, appeared “like a ship on fire in mid-ocean with ammunition in the hold”. An explosion at any time would leave nothing for Britain to hand over, and would place her in a most precarious situation. He, therefore, turned into a man in a hurry, determined not to let a catastrophe overtake Britain. By early May, he had his transfer plan ready, based on Attlee’s statement of 20 February. By 10 May he had it sent to London.
In a somewhat relieved state of mind, and wanting to escape from New Delhi’s sweltering heat, Mountbatten retreated to Simla for a cool recess. He took with him Nehru, a personal friend whom he considered the nearest to him of Indian leaders. In utter confidence, he showed the plan document to him. Nehru blasted it, as he saw in it “a direct invitation, at least to the major States, to remain independent kingdoms, presumably as allies or feudatories of Britain”21, creating thereby many “Ulsters” in India. This had a shattering effect on Mountbatten.
An over-confident, domineering Mountbatten found himself thrown into a deep crisis. Nehru’s reaction was “a bombshell of the first order”. Of this, Campbell-Johnson writes: “His hair was somewhat dishevelled, but he was still marvellously resilient. He told us that only a hunch on his part had saved him from disaster. Without that hunch, ‘Dickie Mountbatten’, he said, ‘would have been finished and could have packed his bag. We would have looked complete fools with the Government at home’, having led them up the garden path to believe that Nehru would accept the Plan.”22
At that “fateful hour”, V. P. Menon came to Mountbatten’s rescue with a plan* which he had earlier prepared on his own, when Wavell was the viceroy. The latter had shown no interest, but Menon had secured Patel’s general approval of it. Under his plan, transfer of power was to take place on the basis of the creation of India and Pakistan as two dominions. Menon’s plan was, on the whole, acceptable to Nehru. But he could not give a commitment on India’s membership of the Commonwealth. Throughout his political career he had been an anti-imperialist who favoured severance of the British connection. He believed, with Krishna Menon, that “a link with the Crown was a symbol of oppression”.23 How was he to meet Mountbatten’s demand? Nehru telephoned Patel from Simla. Patel told him, “Leave that to me. That is my business.”24
Mountbatten realised that Patel was not only the party boss, but also the “strongest pillar of the Cabinet” who alone could deliver the goods on behalf of India. He needed his collaboration in the quick, trouble-free transfer of power, with no hurdles blocking his path. He, therefore, reached a six-point understanding with him: an equitable give-and-take arrangement. Mountbatten’s three gains were: First, India agreeing to be a member of the Commonwealth without which the Labour Government would not have secured Churchill’s support to the Indian Independence Bill in the House of Lords. According to Mountbatten, Churchill saw in such membership “the chance of holding on to some vestige of the Empire in the form of the Commonwealth . . . That’s how we got the legislation through”. Second, the Congress party officially accepting the creation of Pakistan. Third, settlement of division of assets and liabilities between India and Pakistan prior to 15 August, thereby helping transfer to take place on the due date. Patel fulfilled all the three assurances fully and within the specified time-limit.
In return, Pate
l got from Mountbatten what India needed most. Pyarelal quotes Patel having made a condition that “in two months time power should be transferred and an Act should be passed by Parliament in that time” guaranteeing “that the British Government would not interfere with the question of the Indian States. He said, ‘We will deal with that question. Leave it to us. You take no sides. Let Paramountcy be dead’.”25 No matter how opposed this was to Britain’s declared states policy, Mountbatten could not go against Patel’s wishes. He was conscious of the new winds of change sweeping the country, but more than that, he needed Patel’s crucial help in the division of assets and liabilities between India and Pakistan without which transfer of power could not take place by 15 August.
As leader of the Indian team at the Partition Council, Patel’s role was historic. Its great success was largely due to his business-like approach: brief, quick, firm and yet accommodating. The Partition Council set up a steering committee of two senior-most ICS officials, representing India and Pakistan. They were assisted by ten expert committees to decide on division of such wide-ranging, purely administrative but highly complex matters as total assets and liabilities, records and personnel, central revenues, currency and exchange, economic controls, trade, foreign relations, and domicile and nationality of inhabitants of British India and the position of Indian nationals abroad.
Patel gave the Indian officials full freedom in their work; even galvanized them with inspiring words of advice at the very start of their work: “We are entrusting you with work of great national importance. It has to be done in a very short time. You will have to work very hard, as you have never done before. All I would like to tell you is that all my life I have enjoyed working for the country, and I have been working very hard. I invite you to share in the same pleasure.”26 He thereby aroused their spirit of patriotism. As for himself, at the Partition Council proceedings, Patel played a superb role. He had “an eye for the essential, and yet no detail escaped his attention. He defended with determination every Indian interest”, and had “no difficulty in reconciling it with generosity and goodwill for Pakistan”.
Patel infused a similar spirit of compromise, on a giveand-take basis, among the members of the negotiating teams. He made realisation dawn on them: the sooner they reach an agreement, the earlier India and Pakistan would have power transferred to their respective dominions. At the start, when H. M. Patel (India) and Mohammed Ali (Pakistan), leaders of their respective teams, were bogged down by disagreements on almost every issue, Patel’s magic worked. He asked the two “to go into an adjoining room at his house . . . the two did not have much difficulty in reaching an understanding on every issue”.27 They were unaffected by the politically vitiated climate outside. Jinnah seemed to have been impressed. He was the keenest to get his Pakistan at the earliest. At the Partition Council meeting, when an issue got stuck in disagreement, he spoke to Patel in a hushhush tone in his mother tongue, Gujarati: “Can’t you and I resolve the issue?”
The Pakistanis were considerably impressed by Patel’s approach and outlook—flexible and open-minded. At the concluding session of the Partition Council, the Pakistani representative, Abdur Rab Nishtar, “admired his statesmanship, applauded his constructive approach and affirmed that the Pak Ministers would continue to look upon him as their elder brother”.28
Patel won rich tributes from Mountbatten as well. He thought that “history would accord to the Sardar great credit for his part in the transfer of power, and that his realistic attitude on the three major issues—Partition, Dominion Status and relations with the Indian Princes—was statesmanship of a high order”.29
The roles of Patel and Mountbatten were highly complementary. Jointly, Patel and Mountbatten piloted the Indian ship out of stormy seas to safe anchorage, steering India on the path of her new journey as a free nation. Each helped the other in the transfer of power from Britain to India and Pakistan. Patel secured for India her liberation from British rule. Mountbatten, on his part, proved for Britain a liberal decoloniser in not allowing India to turn into another Singapore and suffer an ignominious rout. By converting withdrawal from India into an honourable transfer of power, he proved Britain a generous giver and secured India’s membership of the Commonwealth. When Nehru could give Mountbatten no firm assurance on that, Patel told Nehru, “Leave that to me. That’s my business.”
*Olaf Caroe, governor of the NWFP, appropriately called 3 June plan “Menon” Partition Plan in his review of Hodson’s “The Great Divide”.
6
CREATOR OF ONE INDIA
Unification and Consolidation of States
In recognition of Patel’s most helpful role in the transfer of power peacefully and within the time-schedule, Mountbatten appointed him minister in charge of states. He strengthened his hands through denial of membership of the Commonwealth to the princes. This killed, for good, the princes’ hope of forming a “Third Dominion”—Princestan. Dejected and forlorn, they felt like lost sheep. Patel’s wisdom and farsightedness lay in his shepherding them into his pen and offering them kind and large-hearted guardianship.
Lord Curzon had written about the princes to Lord Hamilton in August 1900: “For what are they for the most part, but a set of unruly and ignorant and rather undisciplined schoolboys? What they want more than anything else is to be schooled by a firm, but not unkindly, hand; to be passed through just the sort of discipline that a boy goes through at a public school.”1 Patel proved the ideal schoolmaster. None could have been more firm and kind at the same time than he. Patel’s paternalism was the antithesis of the autocracy of the British, or the iron-hand of Bismarck. It was humane, benevolent, and essentially Gandhian.
In appointing Patel minister of states, Mountbatten considered him “essentially a realist and very sensible”, one who befriended the princes rather than turning them into enemies. Mountbatten even admitted: “I am glad to say that Nehru has not been put in charge of the new States Department, which would have wrecked everything.”2
Patel’s first address to the princes, immediately after his appointment on 5 July, proved historic: a masterpiece of diplomatic finesse, reflecting his transparent sincerity and political wisdom. He stirred up the princes’ nobler sentiments by recalling their proud, glorious past, when ancestors of some of them had played highly patriotic roles in the service of their motherland.
Proudly telling the princes that he was “happy to count many as my personal friends”, Patel reminded them: “Our mutual conflicts and internecine quarrels and jealousies have, in the past, been the cause of our downfall and our falling victims to foreign domination a number of times. We cannot afford to fall into those errors or traps again. We are on the threshold of independence . . . The safety and preservation of the States, as well as of India, demand unity and mutual cooperation between its different parts.”
Patel urged the princes to consider, that in the exercise of paramountcy, “there has undoubtedly been more of subordination than cooperation”, and that “now that British rule is ending, the demand has been made that the States should regain their independence. Insofar as Paramountcy embodied the submission of States to foreign will, I have every sympathy with this demand, but I do not think it can be their desire to utilise this freedom from domination in a manner which is injurious to the common interests of India, or which militates against the ultimate Paramountcy of popular interests and welfare, or which might result in the abandonment of that mutually useful relationship that has developed between British India and Indian States during the last century”.
Further: “We are all knit together by bonds of blood and feeling, no less than of self-interest. None can segregate us into segments; no impassible barriers can be set up between us . . . I invite my friends, the Rulers of States, and their people to the councils of the Constituent Assembly in this spirit of friendliness and cooperation in a joint endeavour, inspired by common allegiance to our Motherland for the common good of us all.” In a masterly peroration, Patel declare
d:
We are at a momentous stage in the history of India. By common endeavour, we can raise the country to a new greatness, while lack of unity will expose us to fresh calamities. I hope the Indian States will bear in mind that the alternative to cooperation in the general interest is anarchy and chaos, which will overwhelm great and small in a common ruin if we are unable to get together in the minimum of common tasks. Let not the future generations curse us for having had the opportunity but failed to turn it to our mutual advantage. Instead, let it be our proud privilege to leave a legacy of mutually beneficial relationship which would raise this sacred land to its proper place amongst the nations of the world and turn it into an abode of peace and prosperity.3
Patel was the recipient of many felicitations. Voicing the princes’ sentiments, Bikaner said:
May I take this opportunity of sending you my very best wishes in the onerous duties which have fallen upon you . . . The fact that one of the most respected and mature statesmen and leaders of your experience and judgment has been chosen is, I feel, a happy augury. It is most gratifying to recall that you have always shown a realistic and cordial attitude towards the States. The friendly hand that you have so spontaneously extended to the Princes and States . . . is, I need hardly assure you, greatly appreciated by us. We are confident that we may look forward to an association of full cooperation with you and a sympathetic understanding at your hands of the very important problems vitally affecting the States at the present transitional stage, thus enabling the States to take their due and honoured place in the future Union of India, in the making of which we are all proud to give our wholehearted support. I know that the interests of the Princes and States are safe in your hands.4