by Paul Scott
He gave an order. A junior officer in the landing craft blew a whistle and raised a flag. From half-a-mile out, where waited a formidable line of heavy landing-craft (and further behind still, the big ships that had formed part of the Zipper convoys) there at once came the growling sound of marine engines starting up. Almost, one could smell the oily fumes. They came in, making impressive waves and wakes with their blunt bows and sterns: ten, twenty, thirty of them; and then stopped, crashed down their single fronts or dramatically opened their double ones. Being so heavy they had not come in further because it was known (through intelligence) that for the last two hundred yards the water was barely wading depth, not more than eighteen inches, insufficient to get way astern for putting back to the ships for more loads. They had stopped about four hundred yards out where there were three feet beneath them, sufficient for their purpose, and no obstacle either for the green-clad infantry or for the waterproofed trucks, carriers and armoured vehicles which now spewed out of them and began to advance, remorselessly shortening the distance between themselves and the observers on the sands.
After going fifty yards, though, something odd happened. The leaders of the files of soldiers in the centre suddenly disappeared beneath the bland, scarcely rippling surface, and on one of the flanks the line of vehicles sank equally suddenly – not completely like the men but up to their superstructures. Whistles blew, men shouted and thrashed around. Only on the other flank was the operation of landing going smoothly, but in that sector there was no treacherous and unexpected sandbank, nor any of the quicksand which nearly cost a life or two and claimed more than one armoured vehicle.
The senior officer on the beach, having run instinctively forward, was standing now, bemused, with his beautiful boots in several inches of water. He was concerned for his troops and had no opportunity of observing the Japanese officers behind him; but his aide did, and later – whenever he recounted the tale – said he had never until that moment really understood what was meant by the inscrutability of the Orient.
He also said he hoped that if his commander felt he’d suffered any kind of humiliation from this incident he’d been more than compensated a few days later when he went down to Singapore, freshly laundered, to watch the simple, precise, efficient and impeccably organized formal surrender by the Japanese in Malaya to the brisk and handsome naval officer, the Supremo, who in less than eighteen months’ time was to mount a far less simple but equally precise, efficient and impeccably organized operation – not for receiving power back but for handing it over.
BOOK TWO 1947
Pandora’s Box
I
1947
IT WAS JUNE, and there was a full year to go before the date the British Government had proposed as one by which it could be assumed that a satisfactory constitutional settlement would have been reached and the raj could withdraw in honour of its undertakings, and the long struggle for independence could be considered over.
But the bustling new Viceroy was back in Delhi. He had returned from consultations in London on the last day of May. Scarcely pausing to get his feet back under the desk, on June 2 he held meetings with Indian leaders and told them in confidence of the new plan proposed by him and approved by the British cabinet. On June 3 he broadcast to the Indian nation and said it was now clear that the division of India into two self-governing dominions, India and Pakistan, was inevitable, and added that the British Parliament would pass the necessary legislation to demit power on this basis during the present parliamentary session.
On June 4 he held a press conference (a feature of his vice-royalty which some old hands thought unnecessarily showy) and in answer to a question confirmed that this hastening through of legislation in Whitehall meant that Government would transfer power not next year but this year. He said, ‘I think the transfer could be about the fifteenth of August.’
The astonished questioner did a rapid calculation. Ten weeks to go. Ten weeks. Ten weeks? It may have been that on this occasion several members of the Bengal Club at least looked like dying of apoplexy, but there is no reliable evidence, and they must by now have become inured to such rude shocks, however terminally rude this one seemed. It is far more likely that in other places where a more sophisticated response was to be expected, people simply said, ‘I wonder what Halki will make of it?’
Halki was the new pseudonym of a young Brahmin, Shankar Lal, a shy retiring man who had left his orthodox family in the Punjab to earn his living as a cartoonist in Bombay. Halki meant ‘light-weight or counterfeit’ and replaced an earlier pseudonym, Bhopa (a priest possessed by the spirit of the god he worships). The new pseudonym wasn’t intended to hide his identity; his style was unmistakable; even the CID recognized it when his cartoons began to reappear after the several months of unemployment that followed the publication of the still-famous Churchill two-finger cartoon. As to that unemployment, the one or two close friends in whom he confided explained to others that his silence was not due to editorial cowardice so much as to Shankar Lal’s strength of character. Lal had refused several offers from editors only too willing to uphold the freedom of the press. He had gone into seclusion to think about the nature of his political commitment and to perfect his style; but he had made a verbal agreement with the editor of a popular Indian-controlled English-language newspaper to offer his work exclusively to him directly he felt ready to publish again.
During this interim period his editor-designate sometimes went out to Juhu, where Lal lived in great simplicity, to look at his work and try to persuade him to start publishing right away. Lal declined, with his usual courtesy, but often gave the editor whichever of the private cartoons he had most admired, and these the editor framed and arranged round the walls of his office (which was where Perron now saw them).
Halki’s most devoted admirers used to – and still – say that a retrospective exhibition would show how Shankar Lal’s youthful political adherence to Congress’s aims of unity and freedom had shaded off into a generally humanist view of life. Among the unpublished work from the watershed period between the Churchill two-finger cartoon and an equally famous cartoon that marked his reappearance was one drawn in late August, 1945, after Wavell’s announcement of cold-weather elections. This depicted the then-Viceroy, statue-naked on a plinth (inscribed ‘Vote!’) in the attitude of Rodin’s Thinker, his bronze shoulders caked with snow. Actually, there were two versions of this unpublished work. The first included in the distant background a hot and sweaty affray between Muslims and Hindus and was captioned ‘The Solution?’. The second version, still featuring Wavell as the snow-clad Thinker, omitted the affray but substituted the figure of an undernourished child asleep at the base of the plinth, with one hand grasping his begging bowl. The word ‘Vote!’ had disappeared from the plinth but reappeared on the side of the empty bowl. This was Perron’s favourite of the two.
A successor to this unpublished cartoon (also unpublished) was dated 20 September 1945, the day after Wavell’s report to the nation on his return from London, where he had attempted (unsuccessfully) to wrest from Attlee’s government the kind of clear statement of policy that would have given the already-announced cold-weather elections the special significance which all political parties in India felt was lacking: a clear statement about independence. This cartoon was captioned ‘Box-Wallah’, and portrayed Wavell in the garb of an itinerant Indian merchant and purveyor of ladies’ dress materials, squatting on his hunkers on the verandah of a European bungalow, recommending his wares to a gathering of memsahibs who bore remarkable resemblances to Bapu, Nehru, Patel, Tara Singh, Maulana Azad and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Jinnah was sitting somewhat apart from ‘her’ colleagues, consulting a glossy magazine marked ‘The Pakistan Ladies’ Home Journal’; but none of them was responding to the pleas of the box-wallah or to the sight of the avalanche of silks and woollens he was flinging hopefully in all directions (lengths marked: ‘New Executive Council – Indian patterns’; ‘Central Assembly Dress Lengths (for Cold
Weather Wear)’; ‘Constituent Assembly Fashion Designs, For All Seasons’; ‘Provincial Election Lengths: Graded Prices’; ‘Dominion Status Fabrics (Slightly Soiled)’.
Why didn’t Halki want to publish this one? Perron asked. Oh, the editor said, Halki wanted to. It was he, the editor, who had refused. One couldn’t dress such eminent men up in women’s clothes, like so many transvestites, especially when the women’s clothes were European-style. Look at Gandhi’s legs, (the editor said) and at those flapper’s shoes.
The next significant cartoon was the one with which Halki had made his public reappearance, in December 1945, when (after an adjournment) the ‘show-piece’ trials of three INA officers began at the Red Fort in Delhi. Perron had already seen this one, because his old officer from Poona days had sent it to him. It was with this cartoon that Perron’s interest in Halki had begun.
The trials were described as showpieces because they seemed to have less to do with the seriousness of the cases chosen to begin the long legal process of bringing to justice men who had waged war against the king than they had to do with proving GHQ’S and the C.-in-C.’s determination not to show partiality (or, conversely, to attack the three main communities simultaneously). The officers chosen for the grand opening trial at the Red Fort had been Shah Nawaz Khan (a Muslim), Captain P. K. Sahgal (a Hindu) and Lieutenant G. Dhillon (a Sikh).
Halki’s cartoon was very simple. It consisted merely in a beautifully sombre and perfectly proportioned drawing of the Red Fort, and carried the bleak caption, ‘The King-Emperor’s Tomb.’ That was all. From that day, the editor told Perron, circulation began to rise. The cartoonist had caught the right new mood and Halki became famous overnight. But he had remained shy, enigmatic. Some of his cartoons occasionally seemed almost pro-British, or anti-party. For instance there was this one, in 1946, at the time of the short-lived but tricky mutiny at Bombay in the Royal Indian Navy, a mutiny which had surely convinced the British, if they weren’t convinced already, that their time had expired. But the cartoon had taken editorial courage to publish because it showed an Indian frigate, controlled by mutinous ratings who had trained the ship’s guns on the Royal Yacht Club and were about to open fire. Bursting through the roped-off gangway to stop them was Patel, in full Congress garb, waving his arms hysterically. The caption ran, ‘What are you doing, for God’s sake? One day we may want it ourselves.’fn1
Perron did not remember this one. Neither Bob Chalmers, his old officer from Poona, nor Aunt Charlotte had sent it to him. Nor did he remember the next two or three the editor showed him. The first of these pre-dated the naval mutiny joke and made a pair with the Red Fort cartoon. It was a meticulous drawing of a famous building, the Central Assembly in Delhi, in which in the first phase of the cold-weather elections the Congress had captured all the general seats but the Muslim League had won every one of the seats reserved for Muslims. Both parties had claimed a landslide victory and Halki’s cartoon was captioned Jai Hind! Closer inspection revealed a fissure in the foundation of the building and a crack spreading right up through one side of the fabric. Reluctantly, the editor hadn’t published this, but he published the two-part cartoon in which Halki satirized the climax and anticlimax of the INA trials at the Red Fort.
The first frame showed a senior British officer mounted on a dome in the attitude of the statue of justice above the Old Bailey in London. Although blindfolded, the officer was recognizable as the C.-in-C. His scales were unusual since instead of two suspended trays there were three, each occupied by a mannikin figure representing the religion of each of the three accused, a Hindu, a Sikh and a Muslim. The C.-in-C.’s sword was held firmly aloft. In the second frame, which celebrated the anti-climax after the verdicts of Guilty and the C.-in-C.’s reduction of the sentences of life transportation, cashiering and forfeiture of pay to cashiering and forfeiture only, the scales were empty and his sword lacking its blade (it looked as if it must have fallen off through faulty workmanship). Beneath the blindfold the C.-in-C.’s expression remained unchanged: austere, determined and disapproving.
Yet one more cartoon was devoted to the subject of the INA, but Perron had to get the editor to explain it. After the anticlimax to the Red Fort trials it had become clear that except in several serious cases involving murder or brutality the raj could do nothing except cashier the officers and discharge the approximately 7,000 sepoys and NCOS who, classified as ‘black’, had not already been discharged as ‘greys’, or, as ‘whites’, returned to their units in semi-disgrace. The bulk of these ‘black’ discharges (after which the subject of the INA could conveniently be considered closed) occurred at Holi, 1946, the Spring fertility festival, traditionally celebrated by crowds roaming the streets throwing coloured powders and squirting coloured inks at everyone in sight. Halki’s cartoon, captioned ‘Holi’, depicted a crowd of the discharged men emerging from a detention centre, being greeted by their families and throwing immense quantities of powder into the air and at one another. It took some time to discern in the distant background the plight of a loyal Indian Army sepoy still on guard-duty at the camp who had been sprayed with coloured ink by the departing prisoners and who was obviously being put on a charge by an immaculately dressed and irate British officer for being unkempt on duty. The editor published this cartoon too and received several threatening letters as well as a formal protest from the committee of the All-India Congress.
The next cartoon was one that Perron had also seen. Rowan had sent it to him as an enclosure with the only letter he had ever written. It illustrated a meeting of the Cabinet Mission of 1946 which had come out to India in the hot weather after the elections to seek an agreement on the major constitutional issue arising out of the continuing difficulty the British Government seemed to be having in establishing to whom to hand over when the time eventually came. The cartoon showed the three sweating members of the Mission: Cripps (merely President of the Board of Trade, but difficult to detach from Indian affairs), the Secretary of State (Pethick-Lawrence) and the First Lord of the Admiralty (Alexander). They were sitting staring at a large map of India which showed the country’s provincial boundaries. A legend at one side of the map provided the clue to the different hatchings: perpendicular lines for Hindu majority provinces and horizontal lines for Muslim majority provinces (with a few areas of cross-hatching in the Punjab and Bengal). But nearly one-third of the map remained unhatched. The main caption was: ‘A Paramount Question’ and this was followed by a sub-caption in the form of a dialogue between the three ministers:
Sec. of State: I say, Cripps, what do the blanks represent?
Cripps: God knows.
Alexander: Perhaps the fellow ran out of ink.
Rowan’s comment when sending this cartoon to Perron had been: ‘Confidentially, it’s said to be quite true, that three senior cabinet ministers between them had no idea that the self-ruling princely states, who have individual treaties with the paramount power (the Crown) respecting their rights to their own independence, cover so much of India.’
Another cartoon, which Perron hadn’t seen, dated June 29, 1946, showed the cabinet mission returning disconsolately to London, climbing aboard a plane labelled ‘Imperial Shuttle Service’. The Secretary of State was carrying the Imperial Crown and Cripps was surreptitiously handing him back a large diamond and saying, ‘You’d better stick it back in, already.’
Halki’s inventiveness here lay chiefly in the way he made the three British ministers look like three shady Jews from Amsterdam, and Nehru, Jinnah and Tara Singh look like three equally shady Arab merchants who had come to wave them off but were eyeing each other suspiciously, wondering if the jewel from the crown had been secretly handed over to whichever one of them had offered the highest number of piastres. Perron hadn’t seen the cartoon because the editor hadn’t dared publish it.
After this light-hearted cartoon came a series of tragic ones, every one of which the editor had published. They belonged to the period following Congress’s decision to ac
cept Wavell’s invitation to join a new executive council which became known as the interim government, and to do this without the League. With governments formed in all the British-ruled provinces after the elections, some with League ministries but the majority with Congress ministries, the vital gap in government lay at the disputed and potentially federal centre. One of Halki’s cartoons portrayed this enigmatically. It was the one in which he first reintroduced a characteristic figure from his ‘Bhopa’ days – the struggling and emaciated figure of Indian freedom and unity, last seen clenched in Churchill’s two-fingered fist. Here he was now, the emaciated figure, stretched on a pavement asleep, but in two sections. Nothing connected the trunk to the lower limbs. You could see pavement between them. The majority of its Congress admirers interpreted it as a criticism of the Muslim principle of partition, of a separate Muslim state as a sine qua non of independence. The editor told Perron that it was really Halki’s criticism of the men who had it in their power to join the two portions of the body together by at least attempting to work together at the centre.
‘And these,’ he said, leading Perron to another wall, ‘are what I call Halki’s Henry Moore cartoons, all inspired by those drawings your artist did of English people living like troglodytes in the underground railway stations during the Blitz. I published all these and became very unpopular with the proprietors. A cartoon should make people laugh, they said, even if it is only to laugh at themselves. But I said, What is there to laugh about now? Well – look at this!’