If Caroe did use his political and intelligence officers to sway the tribes, many of whose leaders he personally knew, to back the Muslim League in 1946, as claimed by the Khan brothers and their supporters, he was greatly helped in this activity by the developing situation. As the Pathans became aware that the British were leaving, their wariness started to turn against those whose rule would follow. The Muslim League, in the circumstances, was able to make out that, after the British went, it would not be the Khans but non-Muslims from the plains of India who would rule over them. And the Pathans were least interested in the substitution of the British Raj by a Hindu Raj. The fact that all this propaganda had not, by 1946, appreciably swayed the Pathans is clear from results of the elections for the Constituent Assembly held in July that year. In these elections, the Indian National Congress Party bagged three of the four seats allotted to the province.
The Congress Party for its part was banking on frustrating the Pakistan scheme by denying the NWFP to Jinnah. When Nehru, who held the charge of tribal affairs, decided to visit the NWFP, Patel and Maulana Azad, the Congress Party president, advised him against doing so. Patel and Azad wanted Ghaffar Khan, Dr Khan Sahib, the chief minister of the province, and their Pathan supporters, to handle the situation. But Nehru, with memories of a hero’s welcome he had received on his last visit to the NWFP in 1935, did not heed their advice. His natural optimism, the belief that the Pathans were with the Congress Party for ideological reasons and his inclination to discount the power of religion over people led him to grossly misjudge the situation. General Frederick Roberts’ advice (given in the nineteenth century) that the ‘less they see us, less they will dislike us’, would be anathema to him. How could someone as concerned with the welfare and uplift of the tribes as himself not be popular with them?
As he landed in Peshawar, he was greeted by a large and unfriendly crowd, for which demonstration, rightly or wrongly, Ghaffar Khan publicly blamed the governor and his officers. The next day, at Wazirstan, Miranshah and Razmak, Nehru received an extremely hostile reception. This was the territory dominated by the important Mahsud tribe. According to the resident of Wazirstan, K.C. Packmans: ‘Pt. Nehru completely lost all dignity and his temper and commenced shouting at the Jirga [tribal assembly].’34 Caroe’s report to Wavell said: ‘What they [the tribal leaders] particularly disliked was talk of a regime of love coupled with an arrogant loss of temper.’35 However, a few Mahsud tribesmen did meet and welcome the Indian leader. On the following days, for his other visits, notwithstanding warnings of hostile demonstrations, Nehru decided to make the journey by road. On the way back from the Khyber Pass, which is in Afridi territory, stones were hurled at his car at Landikotal and the Khyber Rifles escort had to open fire to disperse the mob. At Malakand, the stone throwing bruised Nehru’s ear and chin and injured Ghaffar Khan and the chief minister. Again firing had to be resorted to in order to stop the attack, which could have cost Nehru his life. However, at Sardaryah, Ghaffar Khan’s ‘ashram’, the Congress Party supporters rallied in large numbers and kept the Muslim League tribesmen at bay.
B.M. Segal, a former resident of Mardan in the NWFP and now over ninety years old, lives in Delhi. He told me that on his way back from the disastrous trip to Malakand, Nehru stopped to have refreshments at his house. While there, Nehru decided to make an unscheduled trip to meet the Baloch tribe, who welcomed him with open arms. Segal, by this episode, sought to convey that only in those areas on Nehru’s predetermined schedule could the authorities organize hostile demonstrations. Segal, however, admitted that the tide was gradually turning against the Congress Party and was swinging in favour of Pathan independence or Pakistan. The tide, however, he felt, would not have risen sufficiently to sweep away the Congress’ hold on the tribes and the rest of the NWFP in the ten months more that the British stayed on in India.
Caroe reported to Wavell on 23 October 1946 on Nehru’s visit: ‘All these demonstrations were organized by the [Muslim] League…. As soon as it became known that Nehru was coming to the frontier the League decided to intensify the propaganda among the tribes and the Mullah of Manki went on a tour in the Malakand protected area and in Jamrud in Khyber, the tour being timed just to precede Nehru’s arrival. There is no doubt that at those meetings a good deal of fanaticism was stirred up…’36 The governor justified his own inaction to prevent the above propaganda as follows:
Given the fact that Nehru’s tour was obviously intended to push the Congress cause, it would have been wrong to put active restraint against the League’s propagandists going into tribal territory…. Roughly the position is that we have told the tribes that for the time being, power is with Nehru and the tribes have told Nehru that they will have none of him…[to Caroe] Nehru’s visit more than anything else made partition inevitable.37
When Nehru met Caroe before flying back to Delhi, he complained against the political agents in Khyber and Malakand for their partisan behaviour. (The viceroy, despite Caroe’s protests, later instituted an investigation to probe the behaviour of Sheikh Mahbub, the political agent of Malakand.) Nehru advised Caroe that the stranglehold of the Maliks over the tribes should be broken and education, democracy and economic development should be encouraged in tribal areas. Caroe replied as follows: ‘If he [Nehru] had gone round by himself quietly and without losing his temper and told the tribes that he was their guest he would have been politely received.’38 To Wavell, he wrote: ‘This politician of worldwide repute is entirely without any element of statesmanship and that matters such as timing, adjustment, a quiet approach and a decision after weighing a great issue are beyond his ken. He showed courage, but it was better described as bravado with something feminine in its composition.’39 Nehru, by nature, was not a vindictive man. When he started to pressurize the viceroy to remove Caroe, it was only to change the policy of dependence on the Maliks and not because Caroe had lectured him.
Nehru showed great personal courage during this trip. Caroe’s assessment that Nehru’s visit decisively helped the cause of Pakistan was not true. (The story of how the NWFP became a part of Pakistan is taken up in the next chapter.) Soon after Nehru’s visit, Wavell himself went to the NWFP. There, he assured a tribal Jirga that after the British withdrawal their territories would be returned to them. This was seen as a stratagem to mobilize opinion in favour of a fresh election in the NWFP in order to bypass the elected representatives of the province who were willing to take part in the All-India Constituent Assembly.
The formation of the Interim Government had been an important development, but the summoning of the Constituent Assembly that would write the constitution of a free India was being delayed. For Jinnah to relent on the plan he had so assiduously negotiated with the Cabinet Mission and now agree that the provinces placed in groups (b) and (c) be given the option to join these groups or not, as the Congress Party wanted, would be akin to committing political hara-kiri. Such a step would dash all hopes of achieving, through the Cabinet Mission plan, after the ten-year period, the goal of Pakistan. Further, once it became known that the British had stopped supporting his intransigence, Jinnah’s constituency would shrink, particularly in the Muslim-majority provinces of the Punjab, Sind and the NWFP, where the cry of ‘Islam in danger’ evoked little response and amongst Bengali Muslims for whom the call of the quam (universal Islamic fraternity) was muted by inherent Bengali nationalism. A crucial question was: why had the Congress Party gone along with a plan that placed the pro-Congress NWFP and Assam in the ‘nascent’ Pakistan groups? From a letter Patel wrote to Cripps (quoted later in this chapter) it would appear that Cripps, in his anxiety to rope in the Congress leaders into the Viceroy’s Executive Council, had given them some verbal reassurances to the effect that the ‘provincial option’ idea would be respected. However, in view of the Congress Party’s leaders imprecision in negotiating and, at that moment, their impatience to get into the saddle, nothing can be said for certain.
Wavell had advised London that the Consti
tuent Assembly could not be summoned till the HMG had clarified the Cabinet Mission’s intention about the affiliation of provinces in groups (b) and (c) since the constitution would have to be drafted accordingly. However, Attlee and Cripps were not ready at this stage to give a clarification on this disputed matter because it would perforce have to be in favour of Jinnah’s contention, which might provoke the Congress Party to resign from the Interim Government. Such a development would wreck their policy to continue to soften Nehru and Patel by allowing them to exercise real power in the Interim Government. Even more importantly, the resentment against continued British rule in India was rising, as detailed in Chapter 7. It was therefore absolutely necessary to keep the Congress Party leaders as part of the Interim Government in order to curb their potential for mischief from the outside.
Elections had been completed in July 1946 for the 296 assembly seats assigned to the British Indian provinces. The Muslim League had won an impressive seventy-three seats, out of the seventy-eight allotted exclusively to the Muslims under the prevalent ‘separate electorates’ system. But, nevertheless, the assembly would be dominated by the Congress Party. Even if the ninety-three representatives of the Indian princely states joined the Muslim League, the Congress Party would still have a majority. (The precise method of electing the ninety-three representatives from the princely states had not by then been settled.)
On 18 November 1946, George Abell, the private secretary to the viceroy, met Liaqat Ali Khan, Jinnah’s second in command, and reported his views on the summoning of the Constituent Assembly to Wavell as follows: ‘When I explained to him that the Viceroy could not continue to give assistance to the Muslim League point of view indefinitely’, Liaqat Ali Khan was quite blunt in his response: ‘The League could not possibly enter the Constituent Assembly unless HMG themselves guarantee what they said about the group constitutions.’ Abell adds: ‘From what Liaqat said the League could not afford to let the communal feeling in the country die down. They require this communal feeling as a proof of their case for Pakistan.’40
On the other hand, the pressure by the Congress Party leaders and behind the scenes by the Americans, for the long overdue summoning of the Constituent Assembly, could not be indefinitely ignored. Consequently, the opening of the assembly was fixed for 9 December 1946. In the circumstances, Attlee had to take the risk of giving a clarification on the grouping provision but thought it might be best to discuss the issue in a conference before making his official statement and thus soften the blow for the Congress Party as far as possible. The upshot was that he invited the Congress and the Muslim League leaders as well as Baldev Singh, to represent the Sikhs, to London for a conference from 2 to 6 December 1946, just before the scheduled opening of the Constituent Assembly. Patel argued vehemently against participating in this conference after realizing what its real aim was and he himself refused to go.
The conference could not reconcile the irreconcilable even though an effort was made to fudge the disputed issue by proposing that the Constituent Assembly, after the Muslim League had entered it, might refer this matter to the Federal Court. Jinnah smartly shot down this suggestion by stating that no one could better clarify the issue than the authors of the plan themselves. The British clarification on the grouping controversy given on 6 December said:
The Cabinet Mission had throughout maintained the view that decisions of sections in the absence of agreement to the contrary, be taken by simple majority vote of representatives of the sections (and not by majority votes of representatives of individual provinces)…41
The British statement created a great furore in India, which has been reflected in a letter written by Patel to Cripps on 15 December 1946; however, the Nehru Cabinet did not resign from the Viceroy’s Executive Council:
I do not know whether there is realization of the amount of mischief that has been done by the statement [of 6 December]…the sense of faith and confidence about the sincerity of Britain that was created by our settlement is fast being dissipated…. What can we do to satisfy the Sikhs who have admittedly been unjustly treated. If they [the Muslim League] frame the constitution of [non-Muslim] Assam in such a way as to make Assam’s opting out [separating from Bengal] impossible what is the remedy in your statement? All of us feel that there has been a betrayal…42
Nehru’s frustration was apparent from the fact that immediately on his return from London, on the day of the opening of the Constituent Assembly, i.e., on 9 December, he introduced a resolution, which included a declaration that on achieving independence India would become an ‘Independent Sovereign Republic’. The resolution was called ‘the Objectives Resolution’, which he described as ‘an oath, which we mean to keep’. It began as follows:
This Constituent Assembly declares its firm and solemn resolve to proclaim India as an Independent Sovereign Republic and to draw up for her future governance a constitution…
Penderel Moon’s understatement on this development catches the official British reaction: ‘This was not a very tactful move in the absence of the representatives of two important parties, the League and the Princes, both of whom might be expected to say something on the subject.’43 The powerful British establishment in India, still manning all the senior posts in the civil services and armed forces and already hostile to the Congress – ‘the Hindu Party’, the enemy – interpreted this resolution as a slap on the face of the Empire. In England, it led to a further warming of British sentiment towards the Muslim League and Jinnah. The British are the most practical and pragmatic of people. Yet, as said in Hamlet: ‘Give me that man that is not passion’s slave.’ The romance of the Empire had entered the British soul. Since the nationalists had opted for a negotiated solution (instead of a combative one) from 1946 onwards, the key lay in tempering the British wrench from Empire. That Nehru’s move was not properly thought out or coordinated with the other Congress Party leaders is clear from the fact that three weeks later, V.P. Menon, the reforms commissioner, discussed with Patel a different course i.e., the possibility of India becoming independent as a dominion.
This discussion marked an important development. It helped in moulding the course of the Congress Party’s future policy. Menon argued with Patel that in a divided India
…the Central Government would be strong, united and effective, i.e., able to withstand the centrifugal tendencies all too apparent at the moment and enable the Constituent Assembly to frame a truly democratic constitution unhampered by any communal considerations…. If we agree to partition Jinnah obviously could not ask for those portions of the Punjab, Bengal and Assam which were predominantly non-Muslim on the same principle that he was advocating for the communal division of India. Jinnah’s intransigence had the support of a large section of British opinion and, even more important, the sympathy of most of the British officers in India who still occupied the top positions in the civil departments in the capital and in the provinces and headed the armed forces. These Britishers had it in their power to create endless trouble at the time of the transfer of power if India declared itself a republic and left the British Commonwealth. The hostility of the British element could be mitigated and opinion in Britain turned, if India accepted Dominion Status to begin with. The nationalists were not in control of the whole of India, i.e., over the…Princely States, one-third of the total territory that had still to be integrated. India remaining a Dominion would also be an assurance to the Princes who had a history of past association with the British Crown. This would make negotiations with them that much easier.44
Patel was particularly struck by Menon’s emphasis on the necessity of having a strong Central Government. Menon further noted: ‘Like the great statesman that he was, he assured me that if power could be transferred at once on the basis of Dominion Status, he for one would use his influence to see that the Congress accepted it.’45
A note on the discussion between Patel and Menon was sent to the secretary of state, with Wavell’s concurrence. Pethick-Lawrence did
not react because of his feeling ‘that in view of the unequivocal demand of the Congress [Party] for complete independence, there was no ground for assuming that Congress will accept a transfer of power on the basis of Dominion Status’. Wavell’s successor, Lord Louis Mountbatten, saw or was shown Menon’s note on the above conversation with Patel before he set out for India.
There was another factor playing on the mind of British officials, particularly ‘India hands’, who, because of their firsthand knowledge of the country exercised considerable influence on Britain’s policy. This was their genuine belief that India may not last as one unit as an independent state, whereas Pakistan, because of the unifying force of Islam, would prove a more viable option. A top-secret appreciation, prepared in the Commonwealth Relations Office (soon after it replaced the India Office) for the British Cabinet, gives an insight into British apprehensions about India. Though prepared after India became independent, the view in this appreciation had not obviously developed overnight. Such views influenced British policy makers not to put all their eggs in the Indian basket. The appreciation (a fairly long one) was circulated in Whitehall. Its crux is as follows:
…financially, industrially and from the point of view of manpower and general material resources India was stronger than Pakistan. But that India had no real background on which to build and unite a nation, there being no real affinity between its North and South, the existence of disruptive elements like the Sikhs and the likelihood of the Communists, with their own agenda, growing in numbers and influence.46
On the other hand, the appreciation states that Pakistan, although weak in financial and material resources but comfortable in food and manpower,
…has a definite background, Islam, on which to build up a nation and to unite the people…and has less to fear from internal disruptive forces than the Government of India, and less to fear from secessionist tendencies.47
The Shadow of the Great Game Page 27