Approaches were also made to win over Master Tara Singh, the most important Sikh leader, who was naturally concerned about the fate of his co-religionists spread over the fertile irrigated lands of West Punjab and those living in the former capital of Sikh power, Lahore, which would go to Pakistan if the Punjab were divided.
Originally, the Sikhs had simply been a religious sect of Hindus that sought to purge the most objectionable features of Hindu society, such as the caste system and an attitude that placed too much emphasis on individualizing and neglecting social responsibility. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Sikhs had become a militant community with a distinct identity. This transformation was the result of the proselytizing zeal of, and persecution by, the Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb. Most of the Sikhs were farmers who belonged to the same Jat tribe as the Hindus and the Muslims of the Punjab did. In the nineteenth century, under the illustrious Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Sikhs had established their rule all over the Punjab and up to the Khyber Pass and had acquired an awe-inspiring reputation as warriors.
The Sikhs were greatly alarmed at the possibility of the formation of Pakistan, in which case, the whole of the Punjab might slip under Muslim rule. The ‘Akalis’ (or immortals) originally constituted a famous regiment in Ranjit Singh’s army. In the twentieth century, a militant Sikh political party gave itself the name Akali Dal and started a struggle against the government-sponsored priests of Sikh shrines, including the holiest of all, the Golden Temple at Amritsar. In the process, the Akalis turned hostile towards the British authorities. On the other hand, the Sikhs formed a large segment of the British Indian Army and many of their families received pensions from the government. During Gandhiji’s Quit India movement in 1942, only a handful of Akalis had taken part, most remaining aloof. In times of trouble, a minority community, such as theirs, could be expected to look towards the British power for protection.
British officials, including the expert on the Sikhs, Major John Mclaughlin ‘Billy’ Short (‘settle the Sikhs and you settle India’, he used to say) had worked assiduously, during the war years, to win over the Sikhs to the British cause and together to arrange for a Muslim–Sikh rapprochement in the Punjab to keep the province united. ‘A Unionist–Akali Alliance was likely to prevent the division of the province between two sovereign States and lead to an offer of special rights and privileges which would make them feel that their community had a more glorious future as part of Pakistan, supported by the combined might of Muslims and Sikhs, than an insignificant fragment of Hindu India’,34 observed a British civil servant, who, as deputy commissioner in their holy city of Amritsar, was expected to remain in close touch with the Sikh leaders.
The Unionist Party’s coalition ministry of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab had resigned in March 1947. After Attlee’s statement of 20 February, it had become obvious that partition was coming, which led many Punjabi Muslims to shift their allegiance to the Muslim League from the Unionist Party. This shift, in turn, led to the resignation, in March 1947, of Khizar Hayat Khan Tiwana’s coalition ministry, which had governed the Punjab for about a decade. Thereafter, communal tension mounted in the province and Master Tara Singh, brandishing his sword, raised the slogan: ‘Pakistan murdabad’ (death to Pakistan). The carnage of March 1947 in the villages around Rawalpindi, followed by largescale killings and pillaging in other places and in Lahore, brought home to the Sikhs the danger that the community faced as a result of the division of India. The Sikhs’ instinct for survival as a united community, combined with the ruthless leadership of Master Tara Singh, led them to certain decisions: to evacuate their fertile agricultural lands in the Punjab, calculated to go to Pakistan, regardless of the material losses to be suffered in the process and to withdraw in jathas or ‘formations’ into areas to the east that were to remain in India and after reaching these areas they resolved to ‘cleanse’ the Muslims from them and occupy their lands and homes. The Sikhs ultimately lost more agricultural property in the ‘exchange’, but the less well-organized Muslims lost more lives. The Hindus, prominent in the economic life of the province, hung on to their properties and businesses in Lahore and other towns in West Punjab till it was too late and suffered heavily.
All these events took place after the partition plan became known. The riots in the Punjab raised communal tensions in the NWFP (lying to its west) and in Sind (to its south) giving a boost to communal forces there and helping the Muslim League in these Muslim provinces.
During the period between 16 April and 2 May 1947, the withdrawal plan was drafted and redrafted by Lord Ismay and his colleagues at least a dozen times. According to Mountbatten’s report, its broad outlines were shown to Nehru and Jinnah by Sir Eric Mieville, the viceroy’s principal secretary. Both the leaders gave their approval to this plan, but, in fact, the points shown to Nehru gave him no idea of the full scheme.
On 2 May 1947, Lord Ismay left for London with the plan and, on 6 May, wired back that the preliminary reactions back home had been favourable. Mountbatten now embarked on the second phase of his task, i.e., to tackle Nehru on India’s adherence to the Commonwealth.
The Ismay plan had made no mention of India’s affiliation to the British Commonwealth. After hearing from Nehru and Krishna Menon that India would leave the Commonwealth, Mountbatten had decided to take up this issue after he had achieved the first two of his three objectives. The Commonwealth issue was no small matter for Britain or for Mountbatten’s own reputation. King George VI, his cousin and sovereign, had expressed to him the wish, during his farewell call on him, to keep India, if possible, in the British Commonwealth. If independent India remained a member of the British Commonwealth, it would prove that its leaders had accepted partition of their own free will. If this was not so, why would India continue to remain in the British Commonwealth? This factor was particularly important in the context of the US opposition to partition.
Such an outcome was also necessary to avoid a Conservative backlash against the Indian Independence Bill when it would be introduced in the British Parliament and to head off opposition generally in Britain on the ground that the Labour Party was ‘throwing away India’. The White dominions of the British Commonwealth, particularly South Africa and Australia, were sceptical about the British Labour Party’s policies. Jan Smuts, the prime minister of South Africa, had written to Attlee on 16 February 1947:
British retirement now would in effect give sovereignty to Congress India. Surely the Muslim position in India and the Middle East and the British interests generally would make this a very undesirable development…. Strategically and ideologically as well as Imperial considerations point to the Muslims as the better choice if a choice is forced on Britain by the course of events.35
If India abandoned the British Commonwealth, such sentiments against Attlee’s Government would be strengthened.
To accomplish his task, Mountbatten recruited Krishna Menon. There were three reasons for his doing so. The first was because Menon genuinely believed that if the British Commonwealth remained a force in the post-war world, it would prevent the establishment of American hegemony over the newly emerging countries. In a long talk Menon had with Mountbatten on 20 April 1947, he had said that ‘the object of US policy was [to create] an economic, political and military vacuum in India which America would fill’.36 In the correspondence he carried on with Mountbatten that summer, in one of his letters, he wrote: ‘Public opinion is putting the brakes on Mr Bevin [the foreign secretary] and the surrender to the dollar. The resistance to American domination is fortunately mounting high in Labour ranks, although the incapacity to alter social habits combined with administrative muddles tend to retain the dollar grip and to confuse domestic and foreign policies.’37 About a month earlier, in a handwritten letter to Mountbatten, he had noted:
Perhaps you noticed that the Americans are going to help us to fight for our independence, according to Ambassador [Henry] Grady [the US envoy to India]. Independence from whom, it does
not say? Some people take time to grow up!38
The second solid reason why the viceroy could count upon Menon was the latter’s anxiety to get Mountbatten’s help to become the Indian high commissioner to the UK after independence. Nearer the day of independence, there is a record of a cosy exchange on this issue between the viceroy and Menon: ‘Perhaps you would consider whether it is necessary to ask JN to make up his mind [on the appointment]’, penned Krishna Menon.39 To this, Mountbatten replied: ‘The next time I see JN I will ask what he is proposing to do.’40
The most crucial reason was Menon’s close links with Nehru. Mountbatten explained to the secretary of state the reasons for his keeping in close contact with Menon, who was quite a controversial figure even amongst the leftists in London, as follows:
He [Krishna Menon] was a close friend of Pt. Nehru…I would ask him to tell me what was in Pt. Nehru’s mind. He would keep me informed of the background of what was going on in Congress circles generally: I would recruit his assistance to “put over” any points which I find too delicate to handle myself and at all events to prepare the ground for me.41
Mountbatten decided to raise the Commonwealth issue with Nehru in the cool heights of the Himalayas. He invited him and Krishna Menon to be his guests from 7 May 1947, at the Retreat, the viceroy’s hideaway in Mashobra above Simla – a very English cottage with rafters, chintz-covered sofas, water colours on the walls and dahlias and hollyhocks in the garden. In Simla, however, it was the other Menon, V.P., who emerged the hero, and in a startling week, settled this matter – and not only this, but also of the partition of India.
Even though V.P. Menon was the viceroy’s reforms commissioner, he had not been consulted during the formulation of the Mountbatten– Ismay plan. According to Mountbatten’s press adviser, Alan Campbell-Johnson,42 Ismay advised against involving any Indian in the process. V.P. had his own well-considered views on what should be done. He was aware that the Congress leaders’ priority was for early independence and they were willing to make concessions – including territorial – to get it. For their part, the British were determined to ensure that India remained in the Commonwealth and were willing to yield a great deal for such an outcome. V.P. Menon’s contacts with Sardar Patel since 1946 had convinced him that the Congress Party’s Working Committee would come round to accept the secession of West Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan and East Bengal, as also the Sylhet district from Assam. The only major problem would be posed by the NWFP, where the Congress Party held the majority in the Provincial Legislature.
V.P. Menon had no direct contact with Jinnah, but from his British colleagues on the viceroy’s staff, he was aware that, whatever his bluster, Jinnah was reconciled to accepting a cut in the territory he had asked for, for Pakistan. Had Jinnah not told Wavell in November 1946: ‘[The] British should give him his own bit of territory, however small it might be?’43 And had he not told Mountbatten, on 10 April 1947: ‘I do not care how little you give me as long as you give it to me completely?’44 Jinnah had also promised the British that Pakistan would remain in the Commonwealth. So, the outline of a deal was discernible to V.P. Menon:
(1) Partition of India on the Wavell plan, i.e., the smaller Pakistan;
(2) an immediate transfer of power;
(3) since (2) could only be done by amending the Act of 1935 that was in force (rather than wait for the labours of the Constituent Assembly or Assemblies to be completed) this procedure would ipso facto mean the two successor states would become independent as British dominions and as part of the Commonwealth, whatever was decided by their respective Constituent Assemblies ultimately; and
(4) to make India accept the amputation of the NWFP and Baluchistan from its territory, Mountbatten to give a verbal assurance to Patel that he would persuade the princes to accede to one or the other dominion and oppose any princely state from trying to become independent. (Such an assurance would mean 90 per cent of the territories of princely states would go to India and more than compensate it for the territory lost to Pakistan.)
V.P. Menon hailed from the erstwhile princely state of Cochin (in present-day Kerala) on the southwestern coast of India. He had risen from the clerical rank in the Viceroy’s Reforms Commissioner’s Office. He did not belong to the Indian Civil Service (ICS), the elite cadre that administered India. A prince who met him for the first time in a lift in the Savoy Hotel, London, during the Second Round Table Conference in 1931, described him ‘as having an air of authority even though he was clutching a bulky portfolio in his arms, no doubt files for the senior British officers of Viceroy Lord Irwin’s staff’.45 Short, slightly hunched, his lower lip hanging out, he looked the typical diffident babu.*
It was V.P. Menon who put forward the formula used as the basis for India’s constitutional independence. Later, as secretary of the newly created Ministry of (Princely) States he arranged – under the ministership of Sardar Patel and with Mountbatten’s help – for the princes to accede to the dominion of India before the date of Indian independence. The following year (1948) he played a central role in the total absorption of the princely states into the country (or ‘mediatization’ as Mountbatten would call it after the pattern followed in the case of German principalities in the nineteenth century). During 1946–48, he stood out as an innovative tactician, a brilliant draftsman and a highly successful negotiator and was probably the ablest Indian civil servant produced during the British Raj. After May 1947 he became the closest adviser of the Mountbattens, who, in conversations later, always acknowledged his crucial role. Most historians, with the exception of H.V. Hodson, who was once his boss, have tended to ignore him. A loyal public servant of the Raj, V.P. was also an Indian patriot who, by 1946, had come to the conclusion that, on the basis of the realities that had developed on the ground and taking into account the Congress Party leaders’ incapacity to handle the situation, unless they agreed to cut their losses, India could be Balkanized further with disastrous consequences.
V.P. Menon got an opportunity to explain his alternative strategy to the viceroy only when he was taken to Simla in the second week of May 1947. He found the viceroy listening to him with the greatest attention. Mountbatten was particularly struck by the possibility of the Congress Party agreeing to partition and accepting dominion status (and thus remaining in the Commonwealth) if power was transferred forthwith. He also agreed with V.P. Menon that it might be better for the country to be divided, with two strong governments taking over the reigns from the British with their boundaries already decided. This move would be less dangerous than for numerous entities to emerge, and possibly triggering off a free-for-all. If that happened, the country would drift into anarchy and damage British prestige the world over. Mountbatten, taking a quick decision, asked V.P. Menon to discuss his ideas with Nehru who was staying in the same house and seek out his reactions. (By this time, Mountbatten and Nehru had moved from the Retreat to the Viceroy’s Lodge in Simla.) V.P. Menon did raise the issue with Nehru on 9 May 1947 and found the future prime minister not unresponsive.
In Simla 10 and 11 May 1947 were days of high drama. The plan sent to London on 2 May was received back, with HMG’s approval, on 10 May, without any real major amendments, except that its language had further diluted the concept of Indian unity. That night Mountbatten gave it to Nehru to get his reaction. This step was against the advice of his staff, who felt it should be shown to all the parties or to none at all. Mountbatten maintained that he did so on a ‘hunch’ and this ‘hunch’ saved his viceroyalty from failure. However, it is doubtful whether Mountbatten would have had his famous ‘hunch’ to take Nehru into confidence, if he did not also have a ‘hunch’ that V.P. Menon’s plan was the better solution to secure all his three objectives in one go.
The Ismay plan had a bewildering impact on Nehru. He stayed awake till 4 a.m. and the next morning the viceroy received a handwritten note, later followed by a longer typewritten one, rejecting the plan in the most emphatic terms. To Nehru his acquiescence in spli
tting the Punjab and Bengal did not imply casting away the geographical and historical oneness of India. The concept of India having full continuity as conceived by the creation of the Constituent Assembly from which the Muslim-majority areas might be shed, but to which most princely states would adhere, was one thing. To give the various parts of the country the initial option of independence – creating numerous potential successor states and then their combining to form one, two or more dominions – was quite another. Nehru wrote that the plan would Balkanize India, lead to a breakdown of the central authority, provoke civil conflict and greatly demoralize (by making headless) the Army, the police and the civil services. Working under pressure, Nehru had produced possibly the most persuasive letter he ever wrote. Mountbatten immediately understood that the Congress Party would not accept his plan, even though adopting Nehru’s ideas may not, in practice, result in too different a result from his own plan.
To the British, Indian unity may have appeared to be their own creation, but India, with the Himalayas in the north and with the seas washing its shores to the south, had throughout recorded history been one distinct socio-cultural entity. Its people now wanted a ‘nation-state’ on the basis of political unity as the Germans and the Italians had achieved in the nineteenth century, even if some parts remained separated.
It was characteristic of Mountbatten that ‘in a moment of calamity his thought was not how to muffle the difficulties with compromises or procrastination but to find an alternative course to recapture the initiative and succeed’.46 Moreover, Mountbatten now had a fallback position. From one moment to another, he jettisoned his plan and adopted V.P. Menon’s ideas and informed London accordingly. This move was carried out with such alacrity that it has been suggested that the first plan was shown to Nehru to browbeat him to accept the second. This was not so. But nothing focuses the mind more than the prospect of impending disaster and Nehru, who had been dreaming of Asian unity and of salvaging the colonial peoples from the Empire, was brought down to earth to the imminent danger facing his own country. The Ismay plan, therefore, did contribute to his accepting partition beyond the amputation of the Punjab and Bengal and agreeing to independence on a dominion status basis.
The Shadow of the Great Game Page 31