The Shadow of the Great Game

by Narendra Singh Sarila

  Partition also helped China extend its influence right up to the mouth of the Persian Gulf – via Pakistan. In 2004, hundreds of Chinese were building a port in Gwadur in Baluchistan, at the mouth of the Gulf. What facilities China will get from Pakistan remain undisclosed. To begin with, China befriended Pakistan so that the latter would not permit separatist Islamic influences to reach the Muslims of Sinkiang through the British-built road from the subcontinent via northern Kashmir to Kashgar – ‘the main artery into Central Asia’, as Ernest Bevin once described it to George Marshall. From the 1980s, China has helped Pakistan neutralize the larger Indian conventional force, by supplying it directly, and through North Korea, nuclear weaponry and missiles. One may indeed ask: Would the 1962 Sino–India clash have occurred had India remained united? Would the Indian subcontinent have been nuclearized in the twentieth century but for partition?

  The unobtrusive, but steady, pressure exerted by the US on Britain in favour of India’s independence and unity from 1942 to 1947 has been (strangely) neglected by historians so far. Roosevelt made several attempts to persuade Churchill to grant self-government to India after the fall of Singapore, but in vain. As soon as an Interim Government under Jawaharlal Nehru was formed in 1946, the US recognized it and sent an ambassador to Delhi, to the consternation of the British. The Americans thereafter advised Britain to keep India united. They feared that India’s Balkanization would help the communists. It was only after March 1947, when the Congress Party itself accepted the division of the Punjab and Bengal, that the US found itself helpless to do any more. ‘The Congress leaders had in fact abandoned the tenets which they supported for so many years in the campaign for united India’, wired the American Embassy in Delhi to Washington.

  The US pressure on Britain led to one predictable result. To fend it off, Churchill, in 1942, played the ‘Muslim’ or the ‘Pakistani’ card: that it was not British reluctance to grant self-government to India, but the serious differences amongst Muslims and Hindus on India’s future that was creating the problem. Such a move brought Jinnah’s 1940 scheme for partition and his two-nation theory centre stage. The theory of ‘the provincial option’, which created the constitutional channel by which partition could be put into effect, was concocted in London in 1942.

  That by 1943 India had become an important adversarial factor in Anglo–US relations is not well known. This factor could have been liquidated by Indian disenchantment with America, or vice versa, or both. The record shows that Mountbatten, Krishna Menon and Attlee worked on Nehru to raise his suspicions about the US motives in Asia. Side by side, British speakers and diplomats propounded the idea in the US that the Indian Muslim had better imbibed the Western legacy and was a more reliable partner than the basically feeble and unreliable Hindu. The Indian leaders’ ambitious foreign policy after independence, combined with their inexperience, took no time to collide with the Americans’ impatient and demanding nature, mixed with their ignorance about India.

  The Americans, to begin with, showed more understanding of India’s position on Jammu and Kashmir than did Britain. Throughout 1948, the US insisted that J&K’s accession to India could not be brushed aside unless it lost the plebiscite that India itself had offered and, meanwhile, Pakistani forces that had entered the state had to be withdrawn. It was this US stand that prevented J&K’s accession to India being negated, at British behest, by the UN Security Council. But while Britain was able to maintain good relations with India, the neutral Americans were cast as the villains of the piece. This was largely due to Nehru’s basic distrust of capitalist America, his faith in socialist Britain and the personal ties that the Mountbattens had developed with him.

  To bring to light an important, but ignored, historical truth is by itself worthwhile. This is all the more appropriate because India has never recognized the goodwill that the US showed for India’s independence and unity during the end game of Empire. Admittedly, today, given Russia’s retreat from Central Asia and the growing mutual concern about terrorism and political Islam, a new chapter is opening up in Indo–US relations.

  The story is also a cautionary tale for Indians. The leaders of the Congress Party were inspired by high ideals. They built up a broad-based all-India organization without which the struggle for independence would not have been possible. They revived the sagging morale and confidence of a fallen people, contributing to ‘India’s great recovery’, to use K. M. Panikar’s phrase. They devised instruments such as satyagraha (peaceful mass protest or resistance), answering violence by non-violence. Such measures put moral pressure on the democratic British people to push their government to recognize India’s legitimate demands. These were great achievements.

  But the Indian leaders remained plagued by the Indians’ age-old weaknesses of arrogance, inconsistency, often poor political judgement and disinterest in foreign affairs and questions of defence. Overconfidence and bad judgement made them spurn in 1928 Jinnah’s efforts to make the muslims agree to the abolition of the pernicious separate electorates. (Pages 82 and 83). They failed to include, after the party’s massive victory in provincial elections, in their governments, in 1937, those Muslim League leaders who wanted to taste the plums of office. The British archives reveal that in their negotiations with the viceroys in the 1940s, there was no consistency – without which there could be no success in diplomacy or war – or indeed a clear, realistic policy. The Congress Party resolution of 11 April 1942 rejected the Cripps offer that sought to divide the country by giving the provinces the right to stand out, but spoke elsewhere of the right of units to break away from the Indian Union (pages 110–11). In his talks with Jinnah in September 1944, Gandhiji suggested district-wide referendums in British provinces claimed by Jinnah, thereby accepting the principle of some kind of partition (page 179). In his letter to Cripps of 27 January 1946, Nehru mentioned the possibility of the division of Punjab and Bengal (page 201). In fact, they could not even make up their minds on whether or not to accord priority above all else to India’s unity or to consider non-violence a higher duty.

  Resigning from governments in British provinces in 1939 and launching the Quit India movement in 1942 proved counterproductive. For Nehru to agree to include Muslim League ministers in the Interim Government in September 1946, before the League had entered the Constituent Assembly and agreed to stop ‘direct action’ or terrorism, was another blunder. To prematurely declare in December 1946 that India would become a republic, while engaged in delicate negotiations with the Attlee Government on a future settlement, was a mistake. By the end of 1946, they had been manoeuvred into such a corner that if Sardar Patel had not stepped forward ‘to have a limb amputated’, as he put it, and satisfy Britain, there was a danger of India’s fragmentation, as Britain searched for military bases in the bigger princely states by supporting their attempts to declare independence.

  Protected by British power for so long and then focused on a non-violent struggle, the Indian leaders were ill prepared, as independence dawned, to confront the power play in our predatory world. Their historic disinterest in other countries’ aims and motives made things none the easier. They had failed to see through the real British motivation for their support to the Pakistan scheme and take remedial measures. Nor did they understand that, at the end of the Raj, America wanted a free and united India to emerge and to find ways to work this powerful lever. Glaring mistakes were made in handling the Kashmir imbroglio, as recounted in Chapter 13.

  The Mahatma, who galvanized and united the heterogeneous Indian people in the 1920s with his mystical appeal that amazed the world, was of little help to his countrymen as they faced aggression, not from the British police, but from jihadi forces. Jinnah, though playing a weaker hand, had a better grasp of what the British were after and offered a realistic quid pro quo, threatening the use of violence to hammer home his demands.

  The documents also bring out the anti-Congress Party and anti-Hindu sentiments of the British officers serving in the country e
ven as they prepared to quit India. Most such officers, who stayed on after independence, went over to serve Pakistan and did their damnedest against India.

  Was it possible to have avoided partition by 1946–47? It may be worth dwelling on this question for a moment.

  Besides the strategic factor, there were other reasons for Britain to favour partition. One was the doubt in the British mind that India might not have a very good chance of surviving as an independent state. A top-secret appreciation, prepared in the Commonwealth Relations Office soon after British withdrawal (partly quoted in Chapter 9), elaborates this doubt. Factors such as India’s heterogeneous population, the North– South divide, the communal problem, the unruliness of the Sikhs and the policy of the Indian communists to spread dissension are cited in this context. One can’t say how far Attlee, or how many of his colleagues, accepted this analysis. But notions of India’s instability were deeply embedded in the thinking of British officials, senior Conservative politicians and many journalists, including editors of newspapers. In the circumstances, it is not surprising that the British would hesitate to put all their eggs in the Indian basket.

  There was another reason for the British tilt towards the creation of Pakistan. I have referred to the hatred for Indian leaders in general and for the Hindus in particular that most British civilians and military men in India had started to feel by 1947. The nationalists’ non-cooperation in the war effort had created deep distrust for them in Britain; so also in several countries of the British Commonwealth, particularly in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Therefore, the emotion among the English in favour of Pakistan was very great. (It has not subsided entirely even to this day.)

  The Indians too faced difficulties in cooperating with Britain. The British support for the Muslim League as well as for the Pakistan scheme had created a general and widespread suspicion of their intentions among the public. Besides, there were specific points of disagreement. Jawaharlal Nehru was willing to cooperate with Britain on several issues, including that of supporting the Commonwealth concept, which, he believed, would help to balance American influence in the world. But he was absolutely opposed to getting entangled in any schemes to contain or confront the Soviet Union and China. Also, he was bent upon fighting European colonialism as well as apartheid, even if his stance embarrassed Britain and its friends. A possibility that greatly excited him was the opportunities independence would offer India to mediate for peace between the West and the East and, in so doing, strike out a new path in world affairs. By appealing to the deep-felt urges of mankind for freedom, equality and peace, he believed that India could develop a diplomatic reach, which would be as effective in influencing world events as power politics and military strength. These concepts, of course, would be difficult to marry with British ideas,* and were unlikely to persuade Britain to abandon the Pakistan scheme.

  The findings in this book go against the conventional wisdom in India and abroad. The Indians, by and large, believe that the Imperial power supported the partition plan to weaken India, so that it remained dependent on Britain even after independence. This is less than half the truth. The British left no stone unturned to push their allies, the princes – whose territories constituted one-third of the Raj – into the arms of India, except for Jammu and Kashmir. This step helped unify disparate and fragmented parts into a cohesive country. If the British were out to weaken India, why should they have done this, or left the Andaman and Nicobar as well as the Lacadive Islands in Indian hands, which increased India’s naval reach in the Indian Ocean? Or, indeed, why should they have whittled down Jinnah’s territorial demands to the minimum required for Britain to safeguard its defence requirements?

  The English and people abroad generally believed that India was divided because Hindus and Muslims could not live peacefully together in one country and, a separate state – Pakistan – needed to be carved out of India for the Muslims. But the fact is that such a division of the two communities was never made. Nearly thirty million Muslims, or a third of the total Muslim population of India, were excluded from Pakistan. These Muslims residing in Indian provinces, in which they were minorities, were the only ones who could be said to be vulnerable to Hindu pressure or domination. The creation of Pakistan was justified in order to protect them, but they were left behind in India.* The areas placed in Pakistan (the NWFP, West Punjab, Baluchistan and Sind) had Muslim majorities with no fear of Hindu domination and were being ruled by governments dominated by Muslims. Indeed, the NWFP and the Punjab had governments opposed to Jinnah’s Muslim League. But they were placed in Pakistan.

  These four provinces/units, however, had one common feature: the British chiefs of staff considered their territories of absolute importance for organizing a defence against a possible Soviet advance towards the Indian Ocean.

  Partition was a politico-strategic act. It was not to ‘save’ Muslims from Hindus; nor was it to weaken India. ‘Everyone for home; everyone for himself.’

  The British adopted the policy of divide and rule in India after the bloody revolt or the Great Mutiny of 1857. This was a policy to control Indians, not to divide India. The latter question arose when the British started to plan their retreat from India, the facts about which are the subject of this story. If the impulse was Churchill’s, it was Attlee who implemented the scheme. Working behind a thick smoke screen, he wove circles around Indian leaders and persuaded them to accept partition.

  The belief that the Cabinet Mission plan sought to avoid, or would have succeeded in avoiding, partition is mistaken. This plan would have intensified communal tension and most probably Balkanized India, as explained in Chapter 8. However, it served HMG’s purpose as follows. It delivered a shock to Jinnah that the Attlee Government might move away from partition and prepared the ground for him to accept the smaller Pakistan. The entry of the Congress leaders into the Interim Government kept them from revolting; it softened them up to ultimately accept the Wavell–Attlee plan. The exercise served British public relations; it created the impression in the United States that Britain was working for Indian unity.

  The plan for the smaller Pakistan was not worked out by Mountbatten in 1947, as generally believed, but by Lord Wavell in 1945, who submitted its detailed blueprint to London in February 1946. Mountbatten implemented the plan by persuading the two main Indian parties to accept the same. Advancing the date of British departure from June 1948 to August 1947 is often blamed for the chaos and killings in Punjab. The date was advanced after the Congress Party, in May 1947, agreed to accept the transfer of power on a dominion status basis, provided Britain pulled out of India forthwith. The Indian acceptance of dominion status, even temporarily, was important for Britain. (‘The greatest opportunity ever offered to the Empire.’) It would facilitate the passage of the Indian Independence Bill in the British Parliament, by appeasing the Conservative opposition. It would prove to the world that India had willingly accepted partition; otherwise why should it agree to remain a British dominion? It would gain time to persuade Nehru and his friends to abandon their commitment to leave the British Commonwealth.

  Penderel Moon, civil servant and historian who was on the spot, has written: ‘The determination of the Sikhs to preserve their cohesion was the root cause of the violent exchange of populations which took place; and it would have operated with like effect even if the division of the Punjab had been put off another year.’ Admittedly, the Muslim attacks on Sikh farmers in the villages around Rawalpindi in March 1947 confirmed this community’s worst fears that the Muslim League was out to cleanse West Pakistan of non-Muslims, which actually happened. However, Linlithgow and Wavell cannot escape the responsibility for the Punjab massacres. They ignored the warnings of their governors, Henry Craik and Bertrand Glancy, that strengthening Jinnah’s Muslim League in the Punjab at the expense of the Muslims of the Unionist Party, who were opposed to partition – Shaukat Hayat used to call it ‘Jinnahstan’ – would result in a blood bath in the province. Wavell did
forward Glancy’s warning to London, but the policy to build up Jinnah as the sole spokesman of the Muslims continued.

  The view that Britain, by staying on longer, might have avoided the Punjab troubles ignores the fact that the British neither had the troops nor the administrative capacity to control events in India by the summer of 1947. The vigour and speed with which Lord Mountbatten acted at least had the merit of confining the conflagration to the Punjab.

  The British focus was no doubt on Pakistan as a future defence partner in the Great Game, but India too had its value. If it remained in the British family of nations, i.e., in the Commonwealth, this retention would add to British prestige and influence in the post-war world. How Mountbatten juggled the above two British goals, none-too-easy a feat, has been covered in the earlier chapters. While viceroy of India, he prized away the North West Frontier Province from the Congress Party’s control and, while India’s governor-general after independence, he restrained it from occupying the whole, or more areas, of Kashmir. This made it possible for Pakistan to be formed as a defence bastion. Simultaneously, he was able to build bridges between the British and India that led to the latter remaining a member of the British Commonwealth.

  The view that Mountbatten helped India to gain Kashmir, by persuading Sir Cyril Radcliffe to allot parts of the Muslim-majority areas of Gurdaspur district (in the Punjab) to India, is not well founded. A fair-weather road through this district was indeed the only route that connected the state with India. But it was Wavell’s blueprint for Pakistan, sent to London on 6 February 1946, which has to be studied in this context. The allotment had nothing to do with Kashmir or Mountbatten. Wavell had recommended: