India After Gandhi Revised and Updated Edition

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India After Gandhi Revised and Updated Edition Page 8

by Ramachandra Guha


  Now, just in time, came the wake-up calls.

  III

  In 1946–7 the president of the All-India States Peoples Conference was Jawaharlal Nehru. His biographer notes that Nehru ‘held strong views on this subject of the States. He detested the feudal autocracy and total suppression of popular feeling, and the prospect of these puppet princes . . . setting themselves up as independent monarchs drove him into intense exasperation.’12 The prospect was encouraged by the officials of the Political Department, who led the princes to believe that once the British had left they could, if they so wished, stake their claims to independence.

  On their part, the princes disliked and even feared Nehru. Fortunately the Congress had assigned the problem of the states to the pragmatic administrator Vallabhbhai Patel. Through the spring of 1947 Patel threw a series of lunch parties, where he urged his princely guests to help the Congress in framing a new constitution for India. This they could do by sending delegates to the Constituent Assembly, whose deliberations had begun in Delhi in December 1946. At the same time Patel wrote to the more influential dewans (chief ministers), urging them to ask their rulers to come to terms with the party which would now rule India.13

  One of the first princes to come over to Patel’s side was the Maharaja of Bikaner. His dewan was K. M. Pannikar, a widely respected historian who, more clearly than other people, could see that the ‘Vasco da Gama epoch of Asian history’14 was swiftly coming to an end. The forces of nationalism were irresistible; if one did not compromise with them, one would be swept away. Accordingly, in the first week of April 1947 Bikaner issued a public appeal to his fellow princes to join the Constituent Assembly. Their entry into the Assembly, he said, would ‘make quite clear to everyone that the Indian Princes are not only working for the good of their States and for their mother country but are above all patriotic and worthy sons of India’.15

  The first chiefdom to join the Constituent Assembly, back in February, had in fact been the state of Baroda. After Bikaner’s appeal a dozen more states joined, many of them from Rajasthan. Pannikar and Bikaner had ‘led the Rajput princes in a fresh act of traditional obeisance to Delhi, where in place of Mogul or British, a Pandit now rules. They have made a compact with Congress – probably, from their point of view, rightly.’16

  Several states in Rajasthan, Bikaner included, would share a border with Pakistan; this, and ancient memories of battles with Muslim kings, predisposed them to an early compromise with Congress. But other states in the hinterland were less sure how far Delhi’s writ would run after the British left. Might not the situation revert to that of the eighteenth century, when the peninsula was divided up among dozens of more or less sovereign states?

  On 27 June a new States Department was set up by the government of India. This replaced the old Political Department, whose pro-princes, anti-Congress tenor had caused so much mischief.17 Patel would be the minister in charge. As his secretary he chose V. P. Menon, a small, alert and ferociously intelligent Malayali from Malabar. Unusually for a man in his position, Menon had come from the ranks. Far from being a member of the elite Indian Civil Service – as other secretaries to government were – he had joined the government of India as a clerk and steadily worked his way up. He had been reforms commissioner and constitutional adviser to successive viceroys, and had played a key role in drafting the Indian Independence Bill.

  His peers in the ICS derisively called him ‘babu Menon’, in reference to his lowly origins. In fact, as British Raj gave way to Congress Raj, there could have been no better man to supervise this most tricky aspect of the transition. Menon’s first act was to urge the British government not to support fanciful claims to independence. ‘Even an inkling that H.M.G. would accord independent recognition’, he told London, ‘would make infinitely difficult all attempts to bring the States and the new Dominions together on all vital matters of common concern.’18

  Menon was also ideally placed to mediate between his old boss, Mountbatten, and his new boss, Vallabhbhai Patel. Between them they worked on a draft Instrument of Accession whereby the states would agree to transfer control of defence, foreign affairs and communications to the Congress government. On 5 July Patel issued a statement appealing to the princes to accede to the Indian Union on these three subjects and join the Constituent Assembly. As he put it, the ‘alternative to co-operation in the general interest’ was ‘anarchy and chaos’. Patel appealed to the princes’ patriotism, asking for their assistance in raising ‘this sacred land to its proper place among the nations of the world’.19

  On 9 July Patel and Nehru both met the viceroy, and asked him ‘what he was going to do to help India in connection with her most pressing problem – relations with the [princely] States’. Mountbatten agreed to make this matter ‘his primary consideration’. Later that same day Gandhi came to meet Mountbatten. As the viceroy recorded, the Mahatma ‘asked me to do everything in my power to ensure that the British did not leave a legacy of Balkanisation and disruption on the 15th August by encouraging the States to declare their independence . . .’20

  Mountbatten was being urged by the Congress trinity to bat for them against the states. This he did most effectively, notably in a speech to the Chamber of Princes delivered on 25 July, for which the viceroy had decked out in all his finery, rows of military medals pinned upon his chest. He was, recalled an adoring assistant, ‘in full uniform, with an array of orders and decorations calculated to astonish even these practitioners in Princely pomp’.21

  Mountbatten began by telling the princes that the Indian Independence Act had released ‘the States from all their obligations to the Crown’. They were now technically independent, or, put another way, rudderless, on their own. The old links were broken, but ‘if nothing can be put in its place, only chaos can result’ – a chaos that ‘will hit the States first’. He advised them to forge relations with the new nation closest to them. As he brutally put it, ‘you cannot run away from the Dominion Government which is your neighbour any more than you can run away from the subjects for whose welfare you are responsible’.

  The Instrument of Accession the princes were being asked to sign would cede away defence – but in any case, said Mountbatten, the states would, by themselves, ‘be cut off from any source of supplies of up-to-date arms or weapons’. It would cede away external affairs, but the princes could ‘hardly want to go to the expense of having ambassadors or ministers or consuls in all these foreign countries’. And it would also cede away communications, but this was ‘really a means of maintaining the life-blood of the whole sub-continent’. The Congress offer, said the viceroy, left the rulers ‘with great internal authority’ while divesting them of matters they could not deal with on their own.22

  Mountbatten’s talk to the Chamber of Princes was a tour de force. In my opinion it ranks as the most significant of all his acts in India. It finally persuaded the princes that the British would no longer protect or patronize them, and that independence for them was a mirage.

  Mountbatten had prefaced his speech with personal letters to the more important princes. Afterwards he continued to press them to sign the Instrument of Accession. If they did so before 15 August, said the viceroy, he might be able to get them decent terms with the Congress. But if they did not listen, then they might face an ‘explosive situation’ after Independence, when the full might of nationalist wrath would turn against them.23

  By 15 August virtually all the states had signed the Instrument of Accession. Meanwhile the British had departed, never to return. Now the Congress went back on the undertaking that if the princes signed up on the three specified subjects, ‘in other matters we would scrupulously respect their autonomous existence’.24 The praja mandals grew active once more. In Mysore a movement was launched for ‘full democratic government’ in the state. Three thousand people courted arrest.25 In some states in Kathiawar and Orissa, protesters took possession of government offices, courts and prisons.26

  Vallabhbhai Patel and
the Congress Party cleverly used the threat of popular protest to make the princes fall in line. They had already acceded; now they were being asked to integrate, that is to dissolve their states as independent entities and merge with the Union of India. In exchange they would be allowed to retain their titles and offered an annual allowance in perpetuity. If they desisted from complying, they faced the threat of uncontrolled (and possibly uncontrollable) agitation by subjects whose suppressed emotions had been released by the advent of Independence.27

  Through the latter part of 1947 V. P. Menon toured India, cajoling the princes one by one. His progress, wrote the New York Times correspondent in New Delhi,

  could be measured from the ensuing series of modest newspaper items, each series running about like this:

  First, a small headline, ‘Mr V. P. Menon Visits State of Chhota Hazri’;

  Then, in the Governor-General’s daily Court Circular, a brief notice, ‘H. H. the Maharajah of Chhota Hazri has arrived’;

  And soon, a banner headline, ‘CHHOTA HAZRI MERGED’.28

  As this account makes clear, the groundwork was done by Patel and V. P. Menon; but the finishing touch was applied by Mountbatten, a final interview with whom was sometimes a necessary concession to princely vanity. The governor general also visited the more important chiefdoms, where he saluted their ‘most wise and Statesmanlike decision’ to link up with India.29

  Mountbatten dealt with the symbolism of the princes’ integration with India; V. P. Menon with the substance. In his book, Menon describes in some detail the tortuous negotiations with the rulers. The process of give and take involved much massaging of egos: one ruler claimed descent from Lord Rama, another from Sri Krishna, while a third said his lineage was immortal, as it had been blessed by the Sikh Gurus.

  In exchange for their land each ruler was offered a ‘privy purse’, its size determined by the revenue earned by the state. The bigger, more strategically placed states had to be given better deals, but relevant too were such factors as the antiquity of the ruling dynasty, the religious halo which might surround it, and their martial traditions. Apart from an annual purse, the rulers were allowed to retain their palaces and other personal properties and, as significantly, their titles. The Maharaja of Chhota Hazri would still be the Maharaja of Chhota Hazri, and he could pass on the title to his son as well.30

  To reassure the princes, Patel sought to include a constitutional guarantee with regard to the privy purses. But, as V. P. Menon pointed out, the pay-off had been trifling compared to the gains. In addition to securing the political consolidation of India, the integration of the states was, in economic terms, a veritable steal. By Menon’s calculation, while the government would pay out some Rs150 million to the princes, in ten years’ time the revenue from their states would amount to at least ten times as much.31

  Acquiring the territory of the states was followed by the scarcely less difficult job of administrative integration. In most states, the land revenue and judicial systems were archaic, and there was no popular representation of any kind. The Ministry of States transferred officials trained in British India to put the new systems in place. It also oversaw the swearing-in of interim ministries prior to the holding of full-fledged elections.

  Patel and Menon took more than one leaf out of the British book. They played ‘divide-and-rule’, bringing some princes on side early, unsettling the rest. They played on the childlike vanities of the maharajas, allowing them to retain their titles and sometimes giving them new ones. (Thus several maharajas were appointed governors of provinces.) But, like the British in the eighteenth century, they kept their eye firmly on the main chance: material advantage. For, as Patel told the officials of the states ministry, ‘we do not want their women and their jewellery – we want their land’.32

  In a mere two years, over 500 autonomous and sometimes ancient chiefdoms had been dissolved into fourteen new administrative units of India. This, by any reckoning, was a stupendous achievement. It had been brought about by wisdom, foresight, hard work and not a little intrigue.

  IV

  When Vallabhbhai Patel had first discussed the states problem with Mountbatten, he had asked him to bring in ‘a full basket of apples’ by the date of Independence. Would he be satisfied with a bag of 560 instead of the full 565, wondered the viceroy. The Congress strongman nodded his assent.33 As it turned out, only three states gave trouble before 15 August, and three more after that date.

  Travancore was the first state to question the right of the Congress to succeed the British as the paramount power. The state was strategically placed, at the extreme southern tip of the subcontinent. It had the most highly educated populace in India, a thriving maritime trade, and newly discovered reserves of monazite, from which is extracted thorium, used in the production of atomic energy and atomic bombs. The dewan of Travancore was Sir C. P. Ramaswamy Aiyar, a brilliant and ambitious lawyer who had been in his post for sixteen years. It was commonly believed that he was the real ruler of the state, whose maharaja and maharani were like putty in his hands.

  As early as February 1946 Sir C. P. had made clear his belief that, when the British left, Travancore would become a ‘perfectly independent unit’, as it had been before 1795, when it first signed a treaty with the East India Company. In the summer of 1947 he held a series of press conferences seeking the co-operation of the people of Travancore in his bid for independence. He reminded them of the antiquity of their ruling dynasty and of Travancore’s sinking of a Dutch fleet back in the year 1741 (this apparently the only naval defeat ever inflicted by an Asian state on a European power). This appeal to a past redolent in regional glory was meant to counter the pan-Indian nationalism of the present. For the Congress had a strong presence in the state, as did the Communist Party of India. Still, the dewan insisted that from 15 August 1947 ‘Travancore will become an independent country’. ‘There was no particular reason’, he defiantly added, ‘why she should be in a worse position than Denmark, Switzerland, and Siam.’

  Interestingly, Travancore’s bid for independence was welcomed by Mohammad Ali Jinnah. On 20 June he sent Sir C. P. a wire indicating that Pakistan was ‘ready to establish relationship with Travancore which will be of mutual advantage’. Three weeks later the dewan wrote to the Madras government informing them that Travancore was taking steps to ‘maintain herself as an independent entity’. It was, however, ready to sign a treaty between the ‘independent Sovereign State’ of Travancore and the ‘Dominion Governments’ of both India and Pakistan.

  On 21 July the dewan of Travancore had an appointment to meet the viceroy in Delhi. The previous evening he met a senior British diplomat and told him that he hoped to get recognition from his government. If India refused to supply Travancore with textiles, he asked, would the United Kingdom step in? Sir C. P. had, it seems, been encouraged in his ambitions by politicians in London, who saw an independent Travancore as a source of a material crucial to the coming Cold War. In fact, the Travancore government had already signed an agreement with the UK government for the supply of monazite. In London, the minister of supply advised his government to avoid making any statement that would ‘give the Indian Dominions leverage in combating Travancore’s claim for independence’. Since the state had the ‘richest known deposit of monazite sand’, said the minister, from the British point of view ‘it would be an advantage if Travancore retained political and economic independence, at least for the time being.’

  On the 21st Sir C. P. had his scheduled interview with Mountbatten. They were together for more than two hours, which time the dewan used to launch an excoriating attack on Gandhi, Nehru and the Congress. After he ‘had worked off his emotional upset’, the viceroy ‘let him go and sent V. P. Menon to work on him’. Menon urged him to sign the Instrument of Accession, but the dewan said he would prefer to negotiate a treaty with India instead.

  Sir C. P. returned to Travancore, his mind still apparently firm on Independence. Then, while on his way to a music conc
ert on 25 July, he was attacked by a man in military shorts, knifed in the face and body and taken off for emergency surgery. (The would-be assassin turned out to be a member of the Kerala Socialist Party.) The consequences were immediate, and from the Indian point of view, most gratifying. As the viceroy put it in his weekly report to London, ‘The States Peoples organisation turned the heat on and Travancore immediately gave in’. From his hospital bed Sir C. P. advised his maharaja to ‘follow the path of conciliation and compromise’ which he, ‘being autocratic and overdecisive’, had not himself followed. On 30 July the maharaja wired the viceroy of his decision to accede to the Indian Union.34

  A second state that wavered on the question of accession was Bhopal. This lay in central India, and had the not unusual combination of a mostly Hindu population and a Muslim ruler. Since 1944 the Nawab of Bhopal had served as chancellor of the Chamber of Princes. He was known to be a bitter opponent of the Congress, and correspondingly close to Jinnah and the Muslim League. When, after the war, the British made clear their intention to leave India, the prospect filled the Nawab with despair. He saw this as ‘one of the greatest, if not the greatest, tragedies that has ever befallen mankind’. For now the ‘States, the Moslems, and the entire mass of people who relied on British justice . . . suddenly find themselves totally helpless, unorganised and unsupported’. The only course left to the Nawab now was to ‘die in the cause of the Moslems of the world’.

 

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