With the installation of the Muslim League ministers in the Delhi Secretariat, senior civil servants started to get communally divided, and the nucleus of a Pakistan civil service began to form. Liaqat Ali Khan, the finance minister, in his first budget imposed a tax of 25 per cent on all profits over £1200 (roughly translated to the present rate of exchange) on capital gains. Congress ministers protested that the finance minister’s aim was to dissipate public confidence in the government. Those who were hit by the tax were businessmen, who, by and large, financed the nationalists.
Despite serious internal problems, Nehru devoted an extraordinary amount of time to foreign affairs. He took a keen interest in the Indian initiatives in the UN on apartheid and decolonization, set afoot plans to organize a meeting of Asian leaders in Delhi by the following summer under the slogan ‘Asia for the Asians’ and established diplomatic ties with a number of countries, selecting the ambassadors and even their staff himself.
The Indian delegation to the UN General Assembly of September– December 1946 was headed by Nehru’s sister, Vijayalakshmi Pandit. The activism displayed by the delegation burst like fireworks over the assembly, heralding the entry of a new star on the international horizon. Vijayalakshmi’s success in bringing the apartheid issue before the assembly despite stiff opposition from the British and the European powers on the grounds that this was an internal matter of South Africa, a sovereign state, was hailed in India as a great diplomatic victory. It raised India’s profile with the subject people of Africa and Asia. However, the most important issue that faced India at that time was negotiations for its own emergence as an independent and united country and not apartheid, however heinous and despicable that system might have been. South Africa was an old ally of Britain and that was not the most appropriate moment to raise this issue at the UN and embarrass Britain. (India’s entry into the UN, with a lot of fanfare, was in contrast to that of China to the same body many years later. The Chinese delegation had been forbidden by Beijing, during the first few years, from taking any initiatives in the General Assembly or from appearing to be in the forefront of events.)
Soon after the General Assembly session ended, a Reuters news item appeared in the Indian press that John Foster Dulles (the future secretary of state of the USA), who had been a delegate at the UN that year, had alleged at a dinner speech (at the National Publishers’ Association) that communists appeared to be exercising influence over India’s Interim Government. Nehru, in an official statement to the press, rebutted the allegation, expressing his surprise and also regret if the report was correct. Before the matter snowballed further, General George Marshall, the new US secretary of state, just returned from China, intervened. He asked the US chargé d’affaires, George Merrell, in Delhi to hand over to Nehru in person a clarification that Dulles’ speech was completely unofficial and that the US Government had no such misconceptions about Indian policy. Marshall also stated: ‘Dulles may have obtained the impression from talking to some Indian delegates at the General Assembly.’ Marshall informed Merrell for his own background: ‘We are hoping to let Dulles have a more complete picture of Indian situation.’23 It was revealed later that Dulles had formed his impression after talking to Krishna Menon, a member of the Indian delegation. As the years went by, the UN became a fertile forum for the origination of misunderstandings between India and other countries, chiefly Western ones, but on this first occasion in 1946 the Americans had acted swiftly to avoid rancour.
Soon after Nehru took over the reins of the Interim Government, Lord Ismay wrote to Prime Minister Attlee on 20 September 1946: ‘The Chiefs of Staff…would like to suggest for your consideration…the necessity to do everything possible to retain India within the Commonwealth’24 (i.e., within the British defence orbit). On 8 September 1946, the British chiefs of staff had submitted a report entitled ‘The Strategic Value of India to the British Commonwealth’. This report basically reiterated the earlier comments that the manpower and territory of India were indispensable for the defence of the British Commonwealth. The main points made in the report may be summarized as follows:
(1) No potentially hostile power should be permitted to establish bases in the Indian Ocean area.
(2) The oil from the Persian Gulf is essential to the British Commonwealth and its safe passage must be ensured.
(3) If India became dominated by Russia with powerful air forces…we should have to abandon our command of the Persian Gulf and the northern Indian Ocean routes.
(4) India is an essential link in our Imperial strategic plan.
(5) [India is also important] because with the coming of atomic warfare there is increased necessity for space and India has this space.
(6) For the Commonwealth to undertake military operations on a large scale in the Far East, India is the only suitable base.
(7) From a military point of view, one of India’s most important assets is an almost inexhaustible supply of manpower.
(8) [Britain should] not give up Andaman and Nicobar Islands which should be developed as an outpost to Burma and Malay [which were still then under British rule].25
A few days after the service chiefs’ assessment was finalized, Field Marshal Auchinleck alerted General Rupert Mayne in London that ‘from a note he had received from Pt. [Pandit] Nehru on the question of Indian troops overseas he anticipated that an early demand for their withdrawal from outside India would be made’.26 At that time Indian forces were stationed in Iraq, Burma, Malay, Hong Kong and Japan and provided the bulk of the administrative organization in South-east Asia Command (SEAC). This information put the chiefs of staff in London in difficulty. Pethick-Lawrence wired Wavell on 26 September 1946: ‘Demand of your Interim Government for the withdrawal to India of all the Indian forces outside India…would result practically in a breakdown in Southeast Asia Command and a very serious situation in the Middle East’. He also endorsed the chiefs of staff’s recommendation that every effort be made ‘to dissuade the Interim Government from pressing such a demand’.27 Nehru’s orders to pull back troops remained in force.
In September 1946, Nehru sent Krishna Menon to meet Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister. Menon handed over to Molotov a letter from Nehru and conveyed India’s earnest desire to establish friendly relations with the USSR. Menon stepped beyond his brief. He also explored the possibility of the Soviets sending a team of military experts to India. This initiative did not meet with the approval of Patel and some other Congress Party leaders. The British were still responsible for the policies followed by the Interim Government; but Nehru did not consult them.
India Office, at this stage, attempted to warn (or ‘educate’) the chiefs of staff about the realities of the Indian scene. On 31 October 1946 the permanent undersecretary at the India Office, Sir David Monteath, wrote to Major General Sir Leslie Hollis, chief staff officer to the minister of defence, as follows:
I must emphasize that it would be unwise to place reliance on the prospect of India as a whole being willing to remain in the British Commonwealth. I say “as a whole” because if India were to split up into two or more parts, Muslim areas and the [Princely] States would probably be anxious to remain in the Commonwealth…Pt. Nehru’s speeches on the policy of the new Interim Government since he took office have all emphasized their intention in the field of foreign policy, to maintain an independent attitude and to avoid becoming involved with any major bloc [which was bound to affect military collaboration with India].28
The views of the India Office can be gleaned from the following draft paper it submitted to the cabinet:
It should be noted that the advantages which Chiefs of Staff expect to get from having India within the Commonwealth [meaning defence cooperation under its umbrella] are not obtained in fact unless India is a willing and cooperative member [italics in the original]…. India may prove to be a very unreliable and elusive ally…. There is a strong tradition of pacifism in Hindu India of which Mr Gandhi is only an exemplary…. In time
of war she is likely to maintain neutrality.29
The British Foreign Office also took alarm. In a joint memorandum with the India Office, it expressed concern to the cabinet on India’s foreign policy during the period of the Interim Government. The memorandum states: ‘Many of the leaders of the Congress Party, and Pt. Nehru in particular, have well-defined views on this intriguing brand of administration, with a lack of experience in the field, and an impatience to carry out ideas formed in conditions of irresponsibility…without regard for [their] wider implications.’ The memorandum continues: ‘In the UN General Assembly of 1946 (that started in September) clashes between the British and the Indians had already occurred on the question of apartheid in South Africa and on colonial matters in the UN Trusteeship Council. India might offer public support to the Indonesians against the Dutch and to Vietnam against the French. It should not be forgotten that the independence movement in Burma, Malay and Ceylon might equally be supported by Indian political leaders and India might demand the return of Portuguese and French possessions.’30
On British interests in the Middle East, the memo observes:
The magnitude and character of the interest of HMG on the Arab shore of the Persian Gulf (referring mainly to the protection of oil supplies and development of oil resources and air and sea communications of increasing strategic importance as Russian pressure on Persia becomes intensified) make it necessary that the charge of these interests should be in reliable hands [italics added] and under HMG’s direct control. We must not risk any Indian interference with our essential interests in the area.31
What were to be these ‘reliable hands’ if India would not play the Great Game?
The British Government appointed Sir Terence Shone as the high commissioner in Delhi. He reached India on 19 November 1946. The first reports of the high commissioner confirmed the worst fears of Whitehall on the direction that the new government’s foreign policy was taking. He highlighted the strong concern in the Congress Party circles with regard to the French action in Indo–China and on the nationalists’ view that ‘Asia was for the Asians’. He also reported that Indians were generally ‘underestimating’ the communist strength and the Soviet machinations in Asia. It was Shone who first warned Whitehall that ‘the Congress Party was planning to draft a constitution that would provide for an independent sovereign republic’. This would mean the end of the British hope to coordinate defence and foreign policies with an independent India under the umbrella of the British Commonwealth, as they did with Australia, Canada and South Africa.
All these developments were a far cry from the British Foreign Office expectations on foreign policy that an independent India would pursue. A memorandum prepared by the Foreign Office earlier in the year (1946) had stated:
India will continue to be dependent upon the United Kingdom for defence, and will follow the United Kingdom’s lead on all major issues of foreign policy…India is likely to become more conscious of herself as the centre of a zone…and may be expected in practice to devote equally close attention to her Eastern as to her Western and Northern neighbours…. A self-governing India within the Commonwealth may well wish to take the lead in Asia and to assume a more important role than China…India will probably take an ever-increasing interest in the welfare of her nationals living outside India…India’s foreign policy will be conducted chiefly in terms of her dealings with her smaller neighbours. Fundamentally, her overriding interest…should be strategic, a concern that the small countries on her perimeter should be “buffer States”, areas which must not be allowed to fall into the hands of any hostile or potentially hostile Power: but it seems somewhat rash to assert that strategic considerations will necessarily be the decisive factor in determining Indian policy.32
That the British Foreign office view was getting through to the Labour Government foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, a former trade union leader and powerful member of Attlee’s Government is clear from his statement to the Labour Party conference at Margate after the partition plan had been announced in June 1947 to the effect that this would help to strengthen the British position in the Middle East.
As soon as he had formed his government, Nehru began planning a visit to the North West Frontier Province, which came under his charge as minister of external affairs. The NWFP was divided into two parts, the settled districts and the tribal belt area. In the former, which included cities such as Peshawar, the Pathans had been brought under direct British administration. In the latter, lay mountain tracts along the border with Afghanistan, which were inhabited by nomadic Pathan tribes. These areas were controlled indirectly by a ‘carrot-and-stick policy’ – the carrot being in the form of large annual subsidies* to the tribal Maliks or leaders and the stick being in the form of punitive expeditions by British forces to quell sedition or rebellion or raids in the settled areas for loot. The British maintained a cadre of officers with great knowledge of the tribal people and their leaders who, as political agents, were posted in the tribal belt to deal with them.
The NWFP and Baluchistan (to its south) were brought under British control in 1880 after the second Afghan war, when certain Afghan tribal areas were wrested from Afghanistan, which brought British-controlled territories to within 50 miles of Kabul. Thereafter, in 1893 the Indo–Afghan frontier was drawn up. This move served to divide the major Afghan tribes and bring impenetrable rugged Afghan territory under British control. Kabul never accepted this boundary, called the Durand line. These tribes remained a permanent thorn in the British flesh, requiring over ten thousand troops to be posted in the area to control them.
‘As long as your government is strong and in peace, you will be able to keep them quiet by a strong hand, but if any time a foreign enemy appears on the boundaries of India these frontier tribes will be your worst enemies’,33 was the warning given by Abd-ur Rehman, the Amir of Kabul, to Lord Lansdowne (George Granville), the viceroy of India.
Fixing the Indo–Afghan border, however, yielded one advantage. It calmed the Russian anxiety that Britain would continue to extend its territory further west, i.e., towards Russia, and cooled the Great Game. Under the Anglo–Russian convention of 1907, Afghanistan became a buffer between the two mightiest empires in Asia, its boundary recognized by each other though not by Afghanistan. (The Durand line has not been recognized by Afghanistan to this day.)
The northwest frontier, stretching from the Pamirs in the north to the Arabian Sea to the south, was by far the most important of the land boundaries of India. It was the only land frontier from which India could be invaded in strength because further north and east the wall of the high Himalayas (abode of snow) stretched from Afghanistan to Burma. Over thirty major invasions had taken place from this direction over the last two thousand-odd years.
The Pathan was always trying to break out from whatever political control that he may have been subjected to and had made allies with those who were trying to unseat the British, i.e., the Congress Party. The NWFP was 95 per cent Muslim, where the communal division could not be exploited, as in other parts of the country. In fact, after Jinnah rejuvenated the Muslim League from 1937 onwards, the Pathans saw him and his party as stooges of the British. As explained in Chapter 3, Gandhiji had offered the Congress Party’s support to the Khilafat Movement. This move helped to endear the Congress Party to the Pathan frontier tribes. From the 1930s, as agitation against the British for self-rule intensified all over India under Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership, many Pathan tribes, under the leadership of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, popularly called the ‘Frontier Gandhi’, saw the possibility of overthrowing the British. In the 1936 general election held under the 1935 Act, which had granted considerable provincial autonomy, the Congress Party beat the Muslim League hands down all over the NWFP.
The Congress Ministry in the NWFP resigned in October 1939 in pursuance of the party’s policy of non-cooperation with the British war effort. This situation created a power vacuum in the region. Soon after, i.e., in early 1940, Jinna
h announced his scheme for the creation of a separate independent Islamic state in the subcontinent at British withdrawal. This announcement offered the Pathans the choice between India and an Islamic state and introduced a communal factor in the province’s politics. Even so, in the general elections of 1945, which were primarily fought on the issue of Pakistan, the Congress Party won thirty seats as against seventeen captured by the Muslim League. Consequently, a Congress Ministry headed by Dr Khan Sahib was returned to power once again. A former doctor in the British Indian Army, he was strongly opposed to mixing religion with politics. He had an English wife.
In March 1946, Wavell posted Sir Olaf Caroe, a highly knowledgeable officer on frontier affairs (whom we have already met in Chapter 1), as governor of the NWFP. Caroe was a strategic thinker like his chief. His first concern was to preserve the NWFP’s half-a-century-old defence connection with Britain, so that the ‘lengthening shadows from the north’ (of Russia), as he put it, did not reach the ‘wells of power’ (the oil wells of the Persian Gulf) nor cast a shadow over Afghanistan. He preferred an independent entity in the northwest of India, which would remain linked to Britain and from where London could also influence events in Afghanistan. The Post-Hostilities Staff of Churchill’s cabinet in 1945 had envisaged the possibility of detaching Baluchistan to maintain military bases there, in Quetta, the area of the Bolan Pass, and along the sea coast near the entry to the Persian Gulf. Why could not the same be done with the NWFP? The alternative was that the area be placed in the new Islamic state whose leaders would be more cooperative with Britain on matters of mutual defence against Soviet designs than those of the Indian National Congress Party.
The Shadow of the Great Game Page 26