But this satisfactory progress did not continue long. One morning, Iengar was stupefied to read in the newspapers that his department had been abolished. He asked his boss how this had happened so suddenly and who was to pay his salary. He was told that Jinnah had gone to Wavell and asked him whether the Department was planning for one country or two. If it was doing so on the assumption that India would stay united after independence, he objected. Wavell did not want to show Jinnah that he opposed partition, and to placate him he ordered the immediate closure of the Department. Iengar was informed that he had been appointed Secretary of the new Department which would manage the affairs of the Constituent Assembly.
In this capacity, he frequently called on V. P. Menon. One day, Menon showed him a secret cable Wavell had sent the Secretary of State saying that law and order had broken down in India and that
the administration was on the verge of collapse. Wavell suggested two courses of action: that power be handed over to those who commanded the confidence of the people and could restore faith in the administration; or that large numbers of British troops be rushed in to maintain security and put down the unrest with a heavy hand. Wavell added that as a soldier he abhorred the second choice and preferred the first.
Iengar flew to Bombay, met Sardar Patel and advised him to take charge of the Government without insisting on a formal transfer of power with dominion status as such a move could not be effected technically. Patel told Iengar to see him the next day, when he said he agreed to the suggestion and would do his best to persuade the Working Committee to take the same line. Iengar returned to Delhi and Wavell sent a cable to the Secretary of State saying that he had learned on the most reliable information that the Congress would agree to an invitation to form a government. London gave Wavell the go ahead signal. Nehru, as the Congress President, was sent for and he accepted the proposal.
A pertinent and interesting aspect of the story of the time was the election of Nehru as the Congress President, when the office, in one sense, assumed its highest importance. Patel was the head of the Congress Parliamentary Board and the provincial Congress committees had expressed their preference for him as Azad’s successor. But Gandhi felt Nehru would be a better instrument to deal with Englishmen as they would talk in a “common idiom,” (a remarkable testimony to this view was afforded by Lord Mountbatten in November 1968 while delivering the Nehru Memorial Lecture in Cambridge. Mountbatten said: “I found myself more attracted by Nehru than anyone else. Having been educated at Harrow and Trinity and having lived so many of his formative years in England I found communication with him particularly easy and pleasant.”).
Many years later, I sought Kripalani’s explanation of Gandhi’s preference for Nehru as against Patel. He said that like all saints and holy people Gandhi wanted “significant men” among his adherents. A legend had grown round the sacrifices made by the Nehrus for national freedom and Gandhi, therefore, preferred them. Insofar as Jawaharlal Nehru’s election was concerned, Kripalani added: “All the P.C.C.s sent in the name of Patel by a majority and one or two proposed the names of Rajen Babu in addition, but none that of Jawaharlal. I knew Gandhi wanted Jawaharlal to be President for a year, and I made a proposal myself saying ‘some Delhi fellows want Jawaharlal’s name’. I circulated it to the members of the Working Committee to get their endorsement. I played
this mischief. I am to blame. Patel never forgave me for that. He was a man of will and decision. You saw his face. It grew year by year in power and determination. After fifty years, a face reveals a man’s full character. For all his faults, Patel was a great executive, organiser and leader.”
Chapter g
INTERIM GOVERNMENT
The stage was now set for the denouement of two parallel conflicts. The larger struggle for freedom had reached its climax. The country was on the threshold of a national government at the Centre. Side by side, the fight for a breakaway Muslim state was forging ahead. On 12th August, 1946, Wavell announced he was inviting the Congress President to form a provisional government. Nehru thus inherited the responsibility of office. But most members of the Working Committee were not altogether happy. They preferred Sardar Patel, who his admirers felt, was the “Iron man with his feet firmly planted on earth.” He would be able to deal better with Jinnah and, even at this late stage, ensure the integrity and stability of the sub-continent. Critical hours lay ahead and the Sardar’s rugged realism, they argued, would provide a safe shield.
I asked Gandhi for his reactions to this feeling among a majority of the Working Committee members. He readily agreed that Patel would have proved a better negotiator and organiser as Congress President, but he felt Nehru should head the Government. When I asked him how he reconciled this with his assessment of Patel’s qualities as a leader, he laughed and said: “Jawahar is the only Englishman in my camp.” Seeing that he had further roused my curiosity, the Mahatma added: “Jawahar will not take second place. He is better known abroad than Sardar and will make India play a role in international affairs. Sardar will look after the country’s affairs. They will be like two oxen yoked to the governmental cart. One will need the other and both will pull together.” I mentioned Rajendra Prasad’s lament expressed to me that Gandhi had once again sacrificed his trusted lieutenant for the sake of “the glamorous Nehru” and the fear that Nehru would follow British ways. Gandhi replied that he appreciated the views of his colleagues but felt that
Nehru would see reason when confronted with the problem of improving the lot of the masses.
This was idle speculation, however, for Nehru’s choice as Prime Minister had become inevitable. Jinnah, his sights trained on Pakistan, promptly spurned Nehru’s offer to the League of five seats in his Cabinet of fourteen. Thwarted in his demand that all the Muslims in the Government should be League nominees, he carried his fight into the streets by ordering the observance of Direct Action Day on 16th August. This was the signal for the great killings in Calcutta (about 5,000 killed, 15,000 injured) and for sporadic outbursts of violence and incendiarism elsewhere.
Eight days later, despairing of a Congress-League rapprochement, Wavell proclaimed the installation of the new Government at the Centre, comprising Nehru, Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Rajagopalachari, Asaf Ali, Sarat Chandra Bose, John Matthai, Baldev Singh, Shafeat Ahmed Khan, Jagjivan Ram, Ali Zaheer and C. H. Bhabha. Nehru’s plea for abandoning further attempts to appease Jinnah had prevailed.
Jinnah’s riposte was immediate. Encouraged by the response to his call for “direct action,” he repeated his demand for the division of the country. The Viceroy met Gandhi and Nehru in yet another bid to end the deadlock. He favoured coalition governments in Bengal as well as at the Centre and told the Congress representatives that he could not summon the Constituent Assembly until they submitted to the Cabinet Mission’s interpretation of the formula for grouping provinces. This, Nehru replied, was unacceptable.
The storm clouds were thickening as the interim Government took office on 2nd September, 1946. Communal riots broke out afresh in Bombay and Ahmedabad. To the Viceroy this was a challenge to a further effort at bringing the Congress and the League round to a settlement. Even as he wondered on the next move, Sir Sultan Ahmed and the Nawab of Chhatari called on Wavell at the inspiration of Jinnah. They told him that the League would join the Cabinet if the Viceroy directly sent for Jinnah to formalise the deal. Wavell approved of the proposal but felt awkward for he was treating Nehru as his Prime Minister. He, therefore, decided to have a v/ord first with Nehru.
When Wavell consulted Nehru, the latter (according to my informant, V. P. Menon) told him: “How can I stop you from seeing him if you wish to?” In English idiom, it meant that Nehru disfavoured the move. But Wavell took advantage of the political connotation of the remark that Nehru would not make an issue of it and resign. He now proceeded to talk to Jinnah directly and Nehru
missed the opportunity of cutting the League leader down to size. (Had Nehru asserted himself as Prime Minister and firmly resisted this move, the events may have taken a different course with Labour in power in London.)
The conventional impropriety having been condoned, Jinnah’s ingenuity received all the latitude for manoeuvre and he extracted from Wavell the concessions he was seeking without yielding a single point in return. Waved told Nehru that the League had agreed to join the Government, but he conveyed to him only vague verbal assurances that the League would participate in the Constituent Assembly. Patel and some others felt that Nehru should insist on written commitments and leave Jinnah no scope for mischief. However, Nehru accepted Waved’s plea that “ad will be wed.” A communique was issued on 15th October, announcing that the League would join the interim Cabinet.
Jinnah lost no time in revealing his hand. The ousting of the nationalist Muslims from Nehru’s interim Cabinet was not enough. Jinnah himself would not stoop to accept office under one he considered a j unior. But he fought dourly to secure Home Affairs for the League. In the tortuous negotiations that followed, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, for the Congress, suggested that Finance be yielded to the League instead. No League representative, he told me, would have the competence to deal with Finance and failure would bring the League bad odour. But Rafi had not bargained with the League rejoinder. Buttressed by able and experienced Muslim Secretaries like Ghulam Mohammed, Chaudhri Mohammed Ali and Mohammed Shoaib, all destined later to play distinguished roles in Pakistan, Liaquat Ali agreed to accept the challenge. This proved disastrous for the Congress.
More than the victory in bagging vital portfolios was Jinnah’s volte face on the issue of the Constituent Assembly. The League, it was disclosed, was adamant on boycotting the constitution-making body. Exasperated by this obduracy, the Congress session at Meerut under Kripalani’s presidency called upon the League either to accept the Cabinet Mission plan in its entirety and come into the Constituent Assembly or quit the interim Government. The quarrel was pursued amidst mounting communal violence. In the middle of October rivers of blood flowed in Noakhali, in East Bengal. Gandhi went into this ravaged area as a lonely pilgrim of peace, to comfort the stricken, to heal wounds and to assuage the flames of communal passion with his message of love. A chain reaction occurred in Bihar and Calcutta causing terrible riots. Gandhi visited both places and brought peace through moral persuasion.
Interim Government 233
Foreign observers noted that he achieved what many battalions of troops would have failed to in restoring amity.
The outlook at the close of 1946 was really grim. Sapru, whom I had invited to attend the wedding of my eldest daughter on 3rd December, wrote back that his health had grown worse. Along with a silver tea set as a wedding gift he sent a letter from Allahabad in which he said: “What anxious times are we passing through! Do you see any gleam of hope? I see none.”
Nevertheless, the reconstituted Cabinet took office on 26th November. In the early days of December, Wavell, accompanied by Nehru, Jinnah, Liaquat Ali and Baldev Singh, flew to London to resolve the deadlock over the differing interpretations of the Cabinet Mission plan relating to the setting up of the Constituent Assembly. But the effort proved unavailing. The Assembly met on 9th December without the League members and adjourned till 20th January.
The Cabinet, meanwhile, functioned uneasily. Nehru originally felt that all members of the Cabinet should first meet informally in his room and take decisions on the items of the agenda so that the Cabinet meeting under Wavell would become a mere formality. However, an unconscious act of Nehru disrupted this plan. Instead of writing personally to Liaquat Ali to attend the first informal meeting, he asked his personal secretary to send the invitation. This roused the League leader’s ire and, in retaliation to this “affront,” he called a separate meeting of the League members of the Cabinet and stuck to this practice to the end. The two thereafter met when Wavell presided and the Cabinet functioned only as a house divided.
The budget of March 1947 afforded Liaquat Ali the crowning opportunity to vent his spleen on the Congress. He raised a storm by his tax measures and, what is more, by proposing a commission to inquire into the affairs of about 150 big business houses on the charge of tax evasion. It was a “socialistic budget,” he contended blandly, but its true intent was barely concealed. It was designed calculatedly to hit the most powerful supporters of the Congress, namely, the Hindu industrialists and also to latently promote the cause of partition.
When the proposals came to light, there was a feeling of total discomfiture. Nehru had, no doubt, asked Dr. Mathai earlier to scrutinise the Finance Minister’s budget speech. But Mathai was unable to discover anything objectionable in the absence of the offending tax proposals. Some in the Cabinet felt that the proposals should not be approved. But by then it was too late to apply the brakes. The Viceroy, moreover, would not permit any frantic
234 Independence Dawns
last-minute revision and urged Nehru to let Liaquat Ali go ahead. There would be ample opportunity later to make amends, he argued.
The crucial differences between the two wings in the interim Government had in truth come into the open much earlier. Both sides voted en bloc and Liaquat Ali, determined to disrupt the Government from within, adopted invariably an obstructive stance. What made matters worse was that Wavell, who had begun extremely well, was showing signs of partiality for the League and acting largely on the advice of pro-League officers. The Congress found this intolerable and discreetly conveyed to Whitehall the need for Wavell’s recall.
About that time, Katial was on a visit to India and staying as my guest. On the eve of his return to London on 16th December I gave a dinner at my house at which Patel, Rajagopalachari and Pant were present. Patel told Katial to convey to Attlee his feeling that Wavell should now be recalled. On his return, Katial contacted Whiteley, who stated that Attlee had already decided on his recall and a search was on for a successor.
The situation in the interim Government continued to deteriorate from day to day. By mid-February Nehru’s patience gave way and he demanded the resignation of the League members. Close on the heels of this came Patel’s threat that the Congress members would withdraw from the Cabinet if the representatives of the League did not quit forthwith.
The provisional Government would indeed have broken up but for a momentous development. On 20th February, Attlee announced in London Britain’s firm intention to leave India by June 1948. That was accompanied by the further announcement that Lord Mountbatten had been chosen to succeed Wavell as Viceroy. The feeling that India’s moment of destiny was within sight served to keep the Cabinet from falling apart. It was imperative to have a national government functioning in Delhi until the final transfer of power was accomplished.
Chapter io
THE ASSEMBLY SCENE
Before we move to the final scene in the drama of “Divide and Quit,” a salute is due to those who promoted a temper in the country and kept the pot boiling in the Central Legislative forum, which in a sense played as significant a part in transforming the Indian political scene as the non-violent mass struggle outside it. But, Jinnah excepted, the personalities who had a decisive role in fashioning the course of the movement for freedom functioned outside the legislature in the post-Irwin period.
Sir Nripendra Sircar, the Advocate-General of Bengal, succeeded Mitter as Law Member and proved the most effective Leader of the House. He disagreed with the politics of the Congress Party, but would not be a tool of bureaucracy. He explained his attitude to me thus: “The Hindus have been kept down for centuries. We need fifty years of association with the British to learn all they know. Let them raise industries. Everything will be ours one day.” His nationalist sentiments brought him into conflict with Finance Member Grigg over the revision of the insurance law to enable the India companies to get business worth Rs. 350 million a year, which was siphoned off by foreign companies. The idea of such a change germinated in Sapru’s time, but every Law Member who followed him avoided implementing it. Sircar, however, decided to see it through and secured the support of Bhulabhai Desai, the Opposition Leader.
British insurance interests were lobbying feverishly against the Bill and Grigg exerted his influence to see that the Upper House did not endorse it. Sircar learned of Grigg’s plans. He sent for me and showed me a copy of the letter of resignation he had sent the Viceroy. It said: “I understand my own colleague is working against me to get the Bill undone in the Council of State. My Lord, my selfrespect does not permit me to stay a minute longer in your Council. I request I may be relieved immediately.” Willingdon asked Grigg to remove the misunderstanding. Sircar told me that Grigg had apologised and that he had withdrawn the letter of resignation.
Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan, who succeeded Sircar in 1939,
was an effective speaker but was not his predecessor’s equal in legal talent. In collaboration with some British bureaucrats, Zafrullah brought a band of Muslim Civil Servants into the Secretariat in New Delhi. These men proved useful to Jinnah at the time of partition because they were instrumental in setting up the administrative machinery for the new State of Pakistan.
Ambedkar was perhaps the most erudite member of the Executive Council and was a powerful speaker. But he was too embittered in his role of Harijan leader to build up a following in the legislature. He was a nationalist to the core. He narrated to me several instances when he had clashed with the superior powers in New Delhi but ultimately got his way. Once, an Indian colleague proposed a Bill to apply economic sanctions against South Africa because of the maltreatment of Indian settlers in that country. The European members opposed the measure. Ambedkar thumped the table in anger and said India’s self-respect was at stake. His spirited intervention proved decisive and the Council approved the Bill.
A chief engineer was needed to head the commission to draw up plans for flood control in the Damadar Valley in Bihar. Wavell favoured the choice of a British expert who had been adviser on the Aswan dam project in Egypt. Ambedkar, however, wanted an American who had experience of the development undertaken by the Tennessee Valley Authority. He argued in support of his demand that Britain had no big rivers and its engineers lacked experience in building big dams. He had his way.
For eleven years, the Speaker’s seat was occupied by Sir Abdur Rahim. His tenure of this office coincided with a period of acute political unrest, during which India passed from one crisis to another. The struggle between Government and Congress intensified, to a large extent against the grim background of World War II. Elections to the Central Assembly were put off again and again, and the climate for the growth of India’s infant parliamentary institutions was anything but healthy.
His rulings, concise and weighty, established sound Parliamentary practices. The most notable of these concerned the Speaker’s competence to declare a Bill ultra vires. He took nearly two months to arrive at a decision. He felt that the tendency to convert the Assembly, dominated by lawyers, into a legal debating society had to be arrested. The courts, and not the Speaker, should pronounce on the validity of a measure. Mavalankar later reaffirmed this ruling, and it still holds good.
Where he sensed a threat to the supremacy of the Speaker in the House, Sir Abdur was uncompromising. He once told me: “This is
The Assembly Scene 237
a politician’s job. I may give a wrong ruling, but, if I fail to maintain discipline I fail completely. Orderliness is the essence of the parliamentary system.” This was his guiding principle throughout his term of office. In his chamber, he would study issues in dispute deeply, and when he took the Chair his mind was made up.
He showed me the vast amount of material he had gathered for the book which death prevented him from writing. He opposed partition as well as linguistic provinces. What mattered to him was the strength and unity of the nation in independence, and to sustain this concept of nationhood he favoured the division of the country into four or five provinces or zones. He had planned to present Cripps with a memorandum embodying his views on these and allied subjects, but Jinnah manoeuvred to foil him. Of Jinnah, whom he appeared to hold in contempt, he said to me: “He knows little of Shakespeare and Milton.”
G. V. Mavalankar (Dadasaheb to his friends) was the golden bridge between the Central Legislative Assembly of the British era and the Parliament of free India. The story of his election early in 1946 to succeed Sir Abdur is full of drama. The Government backed by Jinnah put up Sir Cowasji Jehangir. Voting took place in a tense atmosphere. When the result was announced, the Treasury benches were shrouded in gloom. But most crestfallen of all was Jinnah, who left the Chamber immediately. Mavalankar soon proved that his hard-won victory was more than deserved. When the Congress decided to boycott the Viceroy’s inaugural address to the Assembly, he as a non-party man received Wavell at the entrance and greeted him with the utmost courtesy. Wavell then delivered what was to be the last viceregal address ever to the Assembly.
Mavalankar was the first holder of the office to discard the wig hitherto regarded as mandatory for formal occasions and to preside over the House wearing a Gandhi cap. “Your wig is unsuited to this warm climate,” he would say to Britons who queried him on this point. But he confided to me that he had made the change because “the Gandhi cap is symbolic of the new political climate in the country.” Yet, in every other respect, he proved himself a stout champion of parliamentary traditions.
Chapter n
TOWARDS THE TRANSFER OF POWER MOUNTBATTEN
In the early months of 1947, one sensed a speed-up of the movement towards the transfer of power. The drama was played both in India and at Whitehall. Plans being shaped in London about this time , 1 envisaged British exit on the basis of dominion status. Attempts i "were being made to persuade the Indian leaders to settle for this status and not to stand uncompromisingly for complete independence.
Operation Quit India called for a change of Viceroyalty and the
e Dice of Mountbatten was a happy one. As the Supreme Cominder of the Allied operations against the Japanese in South-East ia, Mountbatten had made many friends in India. Nehru himself had developed a measure of intimacy with both Lord and Lady Mountbatten from the time he visited Singapore during the war and Mountbatten had given him a red carpet treatment by telling his aides to treat him as they would a Prime Minister. The Mountbattens’ links with British royalty were another powerful factor in their favour. Sworn in on 24th March, 1947, the new Viceroy lost little time in reassuring Indian opinion that there would be no going back on Britain’s promise of freedom.
But fresh political developments precipitated a crisis. The Punjab was the crux of the tussle for Pakistan. Although the League had captured seventy-nine seats in the provincial Legislative Assembly out of a total of 175 in the 1945 elections, it was still in a minority and Khizr Hayat Khan, the Unionist leader, formed a ministry with the support of the Congress and the Sikhs. To intimidate the Government as well as the people of the province, the League organised “national guards” and the Hindus answered by joining the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (Servants of the Nation) in large numbers. Khizr Hayat Khan outlawed both organisations.
The supporters of the League defied the ban and whipped up mass hysteria against the Ministry. The Hindus avoided counterdemonstrations, thus creating the impression that the administration
lacked popular backing. Consequently, after Attlee’s announcement on 20th February, 1947, Khizr Hayat Khan resigned. This was the signal for bloody riots in Lahore and Amritsar, where Hindu and Sikh life and property suffered severely. The police remained passive spectators of these happenings, a rehearsal for what was to follow in August.
The Congress Working Committee met on 8th March and charged “some people in high authority” with coercing and toppling the popular Ministry and responsibility for the violence that followed. The Committee said the situation in the province “would necessitate a division of the Punjab into two provinces, so that the predominantly Muslim part may be separated from the predominantly non-Muslim part.” This was the only major decision the Congress Working Committee ever took without consulting Gandhi and getting his prior approval. In a letter to Nehru dated 20th March, Gandhi expressed his bitterness that the Committee had suggested the partition of the province on the basis of community and the twonation theory. For him, this was an hour of great humiliation.
Gandhi arrived in Delhi in the last week of March to meet Mountbatten. He had six meetings with the new Viceroy covering fourteen hours. Devadas and I called on Gandhi twice, and he told us that his followers had let him down badly. Now that power was within their grasp, they seemed to have no further use for him. As neither Nehru nor Jinnah would consent to take second place in a government at the Centre, both had agreed to partition the country, he said. Patel was directing all his energies towards saving India for the Hindus, and Azad was equally obsessed with the plight of the Muslims. Subhas Bose, Gandhi observed, had proved a true patriot by organising the I.N.A. and showing how Hindus and Muslims could work in harmony. Gandhi said he would rather have a bloodbath in a united India after the British quit than agree to partition on a communal basis and give birth to two armed camps, perpetually in conflict.
The Congress, we suggested, had already conceded partition in principle. He replied that he would make one final bid to retrieve the situation. He would suggest that Jinnah be asked to form a national government of his choice. That, he said, would test the bonafides of Mountbatten, Nehru and Patel. What if that failed? we asked. He replied that he would summon all the moral authority he possessed to avert the inevitable holocaust and try to undo the evil effects of partition, if this should come about. Bapu was unusually pessimistic. But he had revealed his inmost thoughts for our guidance.
240 Independence Dawns
It was my practice to call on Patel at his residence every evening, often immediately after Gandhi’s prayer meeting. Our regular contact lasted until his death. I used to give him a brief outline of the day’s news and the latest lobby gossip, as well as any comments Gandhi had made. In return, I would get to know inside information about the state of the country and the trends in the inner Cabinet.
As usual, after Devadas and I had met Gandhi, I gave Patel the gist of our conversation, omitting, however, personal references. Patel commented at the end of my recital that Gandhi must bear part of the blame for the unhappy developments. Why did he listen to his samdhi (son’s father-in-law, namely C.R.) and hold talks with Jinnah? This recognition had “made a hero of Jinnah in Muslim eyes.” Had not Gandhi talked of self-determination for the Muslims? Why only for them? “He trusts only Jawahar to bring about Hindu-Muslim unity.”
Patel said his principal anxiety was to save India from chaos by countering the Anglo-Muslim moves in the opposite direction. Maulana Azad was only worried about the Muslims. “Jawahar is the only nationalist Muslim today,” he remarked. (This is how Patel jocularly described Nehru time and again.) Patel added that Nehru was unduly amenable to Mountbatten’s influence. Nehru had “always leaned on someone.” He was under Bapu’s protective wing and “now he leans on Mountbatten.” Patel concluded by saying that he counted on the Hindus and the Sikhs and patriotic Civil Servants and Princes to support him.
In his last desperate gamble to snatch the country from the edge of the precipice, Gandhi appealed to the Viceroy to dismiss the interim Cabinet and summon Jinnah to form an alternate government. Gandhi, who alone among the Congress leaders stood firm as a rock against what he believed was the ultimate disaster, was slowly finding himself isolated from the mainstream of the party. To him, it was a moment of profound mental anguish, and he saw no other way out. Had his counsel, fantastic as it appeared, been accepted, perhaps Jinnah would have abandoned his insistence on a separate Muslim state. The setback to the Congress, in Gandhi’s eyes, was a small price to pay for Indian solidarity. But Gandhi’s was a voice crying in the wilderness. Already both in India and Britain, plans were being discussed for the division of Bengal and the Punjab.
V. P. Menon gave me details of these prolonged talks. Mountbatten was just flattering the old man, he said: “He is doing business with Sardar and has Nehru in his pocket. Sardar is playing a deep
game. He, in turn, is flattering Mountbatten and using him to net the Princes. We must have all of them in the bag before 15th August, with three exceptions—Hyderabad, Kashmir and Junagadh. Sardar is more than a match for the plan of Corfield, Bhopal and C.P. (Ramaswami Aiyer) to carve out independent states which will split up and encircle the Indian Union. You see, Baroda has defied the Princes Chamber and joined the Constituent Assembly. Patiala, Bikaner and Gwalior are coming in. The rest will follow. Our only worry is that Mountbatten is very sojt towards the Nizam. We cannot have this cancer in our belly.. Jinnah is encouraging the Corfield-Bhopal move to weaken India.”
The following letter Mitter, the Dewan (Prime Minister) of Baroda wrote me on 8th March, 1947, throws a revealing light on the currents and cross-currents at work at the time:
My dear Durga Das,
I congratulate you on your ruthless exposures of the dirty tactics in the Princes Chamber. It is a matter of deep regret to me that Sir C.P. (Ramaswami Aiyer) should lend his great talent to destructive instead of constructive endeavour at this critical time of India’s destiny. I should like you to pay a deserved compliment to Patiala, Bikaner and Gwalior. It will hearten them to frustrate further attempts at sabotage. Bhopal, with his political adviser and director, both miserable creatures, has been shown up. C.P.’s cloven feet have been exposed. Jam Saheb (the ruler of Nawanagar), Durgapur and Bilaspur have been silenced. From what I gather from the Resident here, Jam Saheb is about to turn his attention to Kathiawar, where the Resident anticipates a dog fight. It would be a good thing if you can make an open appeal to Pattani of Bhavnagar, to the sagacious Ruler of Morvi and the enlightened Rulers of Porbandar and Dhrangadhra and Palitana, warning them against the wiles of the Jam Saheb under the protective wings of the political Department.
I will give you an idea which you can use with good effect on a suitable occasion. Corfield (the Political Secretary) and his minions have been pressing on the Rulers the urgent necessity of “a united front.” The answer is that the phrase is used in relation to “enemies.” Why should Indian Rulers look upon British Indian leaders as enemies ? They should meet not to fight but to discuss and negotiate for the good of the people and the freedom of India from bondage. British India is importing democracy from the West. The Rulers can claim to have preserved, to a large extent, the distinctive and essential culture of India. The two currents
a
I.F.G.N.
should meet and go forward as a mighty stream for the good of
humanity.
God bless you,
Yours sincerely,
B. L. Mitter
V. P. Menon was my oldest friend in the Central Secretariat. I knew him when he was an assistant in the Home Department and we came to be friends when he was promoted Superintendent of the Reforms Section created for the Muddiman Reforms Inquiry Committee in 1923, whose proceedings I reported for A.P.I. From then, he had been in the Reforms Section and risen step by step until he became Reforms Commissioner. He shared his confidence with me throughout his career.
Mountbatten advised the Princes to accede to the Dominion of India or to Pakistan according to geographic compulsion, and he warned them that after 15th August, they would not get any protection from the Crown. (A member of a family which provided hereditary Prime Ministers to a ruling house in Central India, who recently retired from the Indian Foreign Service, explained that the Princes gave in and the princely order finally disappeared for three reasons: “Firstly, the Princes were nationalists; secondly, they were chickenhearted; thirdly, the majority of them were fools and lost in vice.”)
The plan for a “united front” did not succeed because the rulers feared Patel, and because of Mountbatten’s pressure. The Bhopal camp envisaged a block of states from Bhopal to Karachi, splitting India in two. Jinnah promised the Princes the use of Karachi as a free port. But a slice of the territory of the ruler of Udaipur cut through this arc. The old Maharana refused to join the conspiracy, remarking: “If my ancestors had joined the Mughals, I would have had today a bigger state than Jaipur or Jodhpur.” This action of the oldest ruling dynasty of India upheld the honour of the house of Maharana Pratap and helped fulfil his ancestor’s dream of freeing his motherland from the foreign yoke. It was the Maharana of Udaipur who had whispered into the ear of Sir Narasimha Sarma in the twenties that he wished to see the country rid of the foreign “devils.”
Mountbatten paid little attention to Gandhi’s advice, confident that neither Nehru nor Patel would back it. He was confirmed in this belief when Nehru declared in a public speech on 20th April that the League could have Pakistan “on condition that they do not take away other parts of India which do not wish to join Pakistan.” When I asked Nehru whether he had taken into account the effect his
statement would have on Gandhi, he said Gandhi had fully supported the objection raised by Gopinath Bardoloi, Congress Chief Minister of Assam, to that state’s inclusion in the eastern zone envisaged in the plan of the Cabinet Mission. That was the major difference, Nehru explained, in the Congress and League interpretations of the plan.
The issue was clinched when Prasad, as the President of the Constituent Assembly, read out on 28th April an authoritative statement of the Congress stand, that no constitution would be forced on any part of the country that was unwilling to accept it. “This may mean,” the statement ended, “not only a division of India but a division of some provinces. For this, we must be prepared, and the Assembly may have to draw up a constitution based on such division.”
This declaration had little effect on the communal situation and as reports of communal clashes poured in, Mountbatten suggested that Gandhi and Jinnah issue a joint appeal. It ran: “We deeply deplore the recent acts of lawlessness and violence that have brought the utmost disgrace on -the fair name of India and the greatest misery to innocent people, irrespective of who were the aggressors and who were the victims. We denounce for all time the use of force to achieve political ends, and we call upon all the communities of India, to whatever persuasion they may belong, not only to refrain from all acts of violence and disorder, but also to avoid, both in speech and writing, any words which might be construed as an incitement to such acts.”
Jinnah signed in English, the language he knew well, and Gandhi in Hindi, Urdu and English. This appeal vindicated Gandhi’s ideals, but it had little effect on Jinnah’s followers, for his hold on them was not moral but political and his technique of direct action was based on mob violence. His supporters were particularly busy stirring up hatred to topple the Congress Government in the Frontier Province.
Patel issued a statement on 26th April inviting the Princes to join the Constituent Assembly and declaring that fresh elections would not be held in the Frontier because only a year before one had been fought on the clear issue of Hindustan or Pakistan and the League had been routed. The Congress Ministry in the province would not be intimidated by rowdyism, he added.
Meanwhile, the Constituent Assembly, minus the representatives of the League, met and defined the rights of citizens and drew up a Charter of Equality. Outside the Assembly, Shaheed Suhrawardy, the League Chief Minister of Bengal, created a little diversion by
declaring that he wanted an “undivided sovereign Bengal” instead of Pakistan. But his demand made no impact on the Hindus of Bengal and the Punjab because they had been frightened by the riots into accepting the division of their provinces on communal lines. Tension continued to mount as Leaguers worked up popular sentiment in favour of partition.
Mountbatten sent his plan to London on 2nd May for approval and himself went up to Simla, accompanied by Nehru and V. P. Menon, for some rest. He received the revised version of the plan on ioth May and revealed its contents to Nehru. Menon was keeping Patel informed of the developments in Simla, and I was in daily touch with Patel. He told me Nehru had reacted violently to Mountbatten’s plan as it had proposed that the British pull out after handing over power to the provinces established under the Government of India Act if the Indian leaders failed to agree among themselves on the new constitutional set-up.
Patel continued: “When I was informed of this by V.P., I suggested that the Congress should throw a bait to Mountbatten, namely that India would be willing to accept dominion status and appoint him as Governor-General. The move worked and Mountbatten got the impression that the Congress was not as hostile to the British as the Tories in London had imagined. Mountbatten thereupon prepared with the help of V.P., a new plan on the basis of partition. Mountbatten thought that he could make Jinnah agree to the plan and that, even if Jinnah did not agree to a united India having dominion status, he would agree to India and Pakistan having him as a joint Governor-General. Mountbatten consulted Jinnah, who gave him the impression that he was agreeable to the latter suggestion.”
A letter from Krishna Menon to Katial from Simla, dated 12 th May, 1947, shed light on the intense drama taking place there at the time. The letter was from Viceregal Lodge, and Menon, who had accompanied Nehru, was staying at the Lodge with the rest of Nehru’s entourage. Katial forwarded the original letter to me for showing to Patel and for my own information. It read: “I am taking advantage of the rest and the time here to write a brief note to you. I am conscious that I have not written but I have done the things that you would expect me to do. It is not possible to write in detail as things change from day to day and yet remain the same. The outlines of it you know from there from your sources which are near enough to facts. In spite of the very good personal impressions created by the Mountbattens, we are yet no nearer solution. The only big change is that people are beginning to realise that the British are
Towards the Transfer of Power - Mountbatten 245
quitting, though often people wonder! The Viceroy has been successful in impressing on some of the Governors the hard fact of the change in British policy though on all of them the effect is not the same. But there are improvements at some places.
“The Frontier and the Punjab are in an awful state. The Punjab atrocities are reported to have even made an impression on Jenkins, though one does not know how long it will last. He is not the worst of Governors, they say. Garoe is hated by our people and is said to be at the bottom of the Frontier mischief. It is not possible to draw any conclusion except that the League, by pursuing Hitler’s tactics, hopes to win the whole of India for Pakistan. Jinnah will agree to nothing, he has agreed to nothing and what is more is trying to lead the Viceroy up the garden path. What we have to ask, and our friends there have to ask, is even if we agreed to a Pakista 1 by partitioning Punjab and Bengal, will Jinnah abide by it or will it be only the beginning of fresh demands for ‘minorities’ inside the rest of India? The same business will go on all over again. Arms are being smuggled in here and the Leaguers mean to create chaos. They don’t care what happens to India. Some of the minorities are also playing a tricky game and there is talk of uneasiness, etc.
“The Viceroy has made contacts with all people, but we can’t say whetTer alTthat helps him to appreciate or to get more nonplussed. He works very hard and makes everybody do the same. There is a lot of feeling about the people around him, particularly Abell & Co. But what can we do about it ? I think he keeps the Cabinet together better and gets on with people better, but that would not be independence. Would it? The British have to make up their mind to make Jinnah agree to what at the very outside he can have, and if he does not, they must stick to the Cabinet plan of dominion status and interim government and let that government settle down to business. There is no other way. But instead they are trying to perform major operations in quick time.
“Actual partition in twelve months is an impossibility, which means you must have a common Centre, which, if accepted, means Cabinet plan and all the evils of partition without its benefits. Our people are in no mood to let the League meddle in our defence, if partition is granted. However, situations change. Gandhiji alone stands out with definite views on India’s division. But he does not have to deal with practical affairs just now. But it is notable the way he stands out. Panditji is worn out and alone thinks of these things. Sardar Patel has a clear mind and sees all the dangers, but in the present situation he is helpless, as we’re not in a fight and the third party is still here. I have had long talks with him usually at five-thirty
in the morning. I also see Mountbatten, in an informal way, but all this does not help you more than you know already . . .
“So far people trust the Viceroy’s integrity, and the feeling here is that he is not getting enough backing from London, where Cripps and others are making difficulties and using their position to assist disruption. So you see, in spite of all I have said you are in no better position to appreciate the situation. I don’t think that the 2nd June statement will represent agreement. Jinnah will agree to nothing.”
The letter ended surprisingly with this warning: “Please don’t send letters except by bag and don’t sign political cables. The League gets everything.”
The first reaction in London to Mountbatten’s plan for partition was adverse. That was why he was asked to visit London and he left Delhi on 14th May. Attlee was also aware that the Congress leaders were irritated by the activities of certain high British officials, as Katial’s cable of 15th May to me indicated. The cable said Mountbatten’s proposal for partition was unacceptable to the Labour Government, that Mountbatten was visiting London immediately and that the removal of Caroe, Jenkins and Abell was being pressed.
While reconciled to the transfer of power, many Britons in India were keen on salvaging whatever they could from the wreck of the Empire. They genuinely felt that Pakistan would give them a foothold on the sub-continent and support British presence in the Near and Middle East. Sir Olaf Caroe, a brilliant I.C.S. officer, whom I had often met at the weekly briefings he had given the Press when he was Foreign Secretary, was now Governor of the N.W.F.P. Congress leaders suspected that he wanted to dislodge the Congress Ministry in the province which was backed by the Red Shirts. As soon as Nehru assumed office on 2nd September, 1946, the Frontier authorities started bombing and other reprisals against tribesmen. This seemed like deferred action of a routine nature for tribal raids on the settled areas of the province, but the Red Shirt leaders immediately informed Nehru that it had been deliberately synchronised with his installation in office to discredit his Government and that the Government’s agents throughout the province were representing it as the first fruits of Hindu Raj.
Nehru told Wavell that this action must stop immediately and that he would visit the Frontier. The provincial authorities in turn warned the Viceroy that they would not be responsible for Nehru’s safety as pro-League and anti-Congress feelings were strong in the province. Nehru would not, however, be deflected fron his resolve, and when he flew into the airfield at Peshawar he was met by large
numbers of Leaguers waving black flags. On his tour of the tribal area, snipers’ bullets ploughed the air round the car he travelled in and stones struck it, the intention being that, while he should be convinced that he and the Congress lacked popular support, his life should not be endangered. Jinnah seized on the opportunity to demand fresh elections in the province.
Mountbatten left for London on 14th May with the agreement reached with the Congress and League leaders and suggested to Attlee that the date for the transfer of power be advanced from June 1948 to 15th August, 1947. (I was told he chose 15th August because the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies on this date in I 945 -) Attlee approved both the agreement and the change of date, and a vastly pleased Mountbatten returned to New Delhi in time to meet the Indian leaders on 2nd June. But a shock was in store for him. Patel told me later the same month that “when it came to finalising the deal, Jinnah backed out. He turned down the proposal for a joint Governor-General and said he himself would become the Governor-General of Pakistan. This change of attitude of Jinnah made Mountbatten friendly to us.”
Chapter 12
DIVIDE AND QUIT
The Viceroy’s partition plan was unfolded to the Indian leaders on 2nd June. All the provinces were empowered under it to decide on whether their constitution was to be framed by the existing Constituent Assembly or by a new and separate Constituent Assembly. Members of the Punjab and Bengal Assemblies were given the rights to decide whether their provinces were also to be partitioned on a communal basis. The N.W.F.P. was treated as a special case because of geographical consideration and although two of its three representatives were already attending the existing Constituent Assembly it was decided to give the province an opportunity to reconsider its position. This proposal for a referendum in the Frontier was the most distasteful aspect of the plan. Nevertheless, the A.I.C.C. approved the Mountbatten Plan at its meeting on Sunday, 15th June, by 157 votes to twenty-nine.
Gandhi attended the session by special request and spoke in
favour of the resolution for acceptance. I wondered how he would reconcile the conflict between his head and heart. He put the issue in a nutshell. “The fact is,” he said, “there are three parties to the settlement—the British, the Congress and the Muslim League. The Congress leaders have signed on your behalf. You can disown them, but you should do so only if you can start a big revolution. I do not think you can do it.” As a sop to those who opposed the resolution in spite of Gandhi’s speech, Azad said: “There will be reunion before long.”
Among the topmost leaders, only Purushottamdas Tandon stood out against partition. He was prepared to suffer British rule a little longer rather than pay this heavy price. He said the Nehru Government had been intimidated by the League. “Let us fight both the British and the League,” he ended amidst applause. But Gandhi had sensed the feelings of his followers more accurately. Had the audience roared back that they would follow him to resist partition he might have reflected on his duty to the nation. In advocating approval of the plan, he rose to a great moral height. While accepting defeat at the hands of his lieutenants he used his personal authority to get them a vote of confidence for the new adventure.
Having secured the A.I.C.C.’s favourable verdict for his plan, Mountbatten now tried to blunt the opposition of the Red Shirts to a referendum. He brought Jinnah and Badshah Khan together and, although no agreement resulted from this meeting, the Frontier leader declared he would not oppose joining Pakistan provided the areas inhabited by the Pathans were merged to a form on autonomous Pakhtoonistan and had the right to opt out of the dominion if they wished. This statement seemed to ease the conscience of the Congress leaders, for they were not prepared to cause a deadlock over the Frontier’s future.
To help matters further, Mountbatten asked Caroe to go on leave when the referendum was held. In the highly charged atmosphere in the province, the Red Shirts decided not to put up candidates for election, and the League notched a victory with 50.49 per cent of the electorate voting in favour of Pakistan. The pro-League Britons’ objective, to keep the Frontier out of the Indian Union or from being reborn after partition as an independent Pakhtoonistan, was thus fulfilled. Azad blamed Nehru for his impetuosity in visiting the Frontier and playing into the hands of the anti-Congress forces. For once Patel agreed with Azad.
Now that partition was a settled fact, tension between the Hindus and the Muslim increased and riots erupted in Lahore and Amritsar. In an editorial on 24th June, I said: “Governor Jenkins is almost
earning the title of a modern Nero. Nothing short of martial law can save Lahore and Amritsar from total destruction.”
B. L. Sharma, who was for years Special Officer on Kashmir and represented India in that capacity at the U.N., told me he had seen a letter written by a high British official to Jinnah suggesting that Pakistan’s security be ensured by not permitting any Hindu or Sikh to live west of Lyallpur in the Punjab. Anyway, the wholesale murder and arson which occurred drove people of these communities out of the region at the time of partition and set off a chain reaction, equally brutal in its intensity, in India.
Indeed, some Sikh leaders decided on the deliberate removal of Muslims in East Punjab to make room for refugees from the western half. They had a political motive for this action, for had the Sikhs been split in roughly equal numbers between India and Pakistan they would not have been an important factor in the politics of either country. Accordingly, the far-sighted among their leaders brought them to East Punjab and settled them in contiguous districts, where they formed the majority. They thus became not only a political entity in India but could also work for a state of their own within the Union.
Both in India and Pakistan, power-hungry politicians were hatching diabolical plots in their self-interest which involved the disruption of the lives of millions of innocent helpless peasants on the greatest and the most tragic movement of refugees in history.
The provisional Governments of India and Pakistan were formed on 20th July and proceeded with the task of partitioning the services and financial assets and demarcating boundaries. The Partition Council achieved the extraordinary feat of dividing the services and assets so speedily that on 15th August both dominions could function as separate sovereign states.
In the days of agonising indecision from June to August, Gandhi proved what a very powerful moral force and educator of the masses he was in his addresses to his daily prayer meetings in New Delhi. His addresses were in the nature of commentaries on current events, and broadcast by All-India Radio, they made a profound impression on his hearers, although they could not change the course of history.
I attended most of these meetings and took note of some of the significant things he said. On 7th July, for instance, he said the Indian and Pakistani Armies were being created not to fight a common danger but to destroy each other. The following day, he said the Englishman was sincere in quitting India but was insincere when he said he was not exposing the country to chaos since he was actually turning it into a cockpit for two organised armies.
250 Independence Dawns
He wanted the Congress and the League to leave the Pathans to shape their own internal administration. On 24th June, he said the Congress must change its objective after independence, a hint that it should cease to be a political party. After visiting Kashmir in the first week of August, he said this state was very important strategically and joint discussions between the Maharaja and the representatives of the Kashmiris and of the two dominions would avert trouble over its future.
He said that after partition he would travel between East Bengal, West Punjab and the Frontier to heal the wounds of partition and promote love and harmony between the Hindu and Muslim, but this intention was cruelly cut short by an assassin’s bullet on 30th January, 1948.
Gandhi advised the people of the French and Portuguese possessions in India not to revolt against their overlords on 15th August but to trust Nehru to do for his kith and kin what he was doing to assist the Indonesians to become free. Indirectly, Gandhi was voicing the fact that he differed from Patel’s view on Goa and Pondicherry and other foreign enclaves and agreed with Nehru’s that the question of their liberation could wait for some time.
On 14th August, Sir Claude Auchinleck, who had been appointed Supreme Commander of the armed forces of India and Pakistan, gave a farewell party at his official residence, which Nehru later turned into Prime Minister’s House, and I shared a table with General Sir Arthur Smith, the outgoing Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army.
I asked Smith how he visualised India’s future, especially that of its armed forces. He replied bluntly: “I do not give your army six months. It will crack up before that. You see, the jawans are like bricks, and the officer provides the mortar that holds them together. The Indian officer will not provide the mortar because his leadership has not been tested and the jawan has no respect for him.”
I felt some apprehension at this statement in my heart, but replied confidently: “General, patriotism is a great force. It will provide the mortar.” Smith snapped back: “No, not with th ejawans. They have loved their British officers because they took care of them. Your boys are too selfish and snobs.” This statement too had an element of truth, and I replied: “I thought the army had iron discipline and moulded character.” “It does,” Smith said, “but it can be tested only on the battlefield. Life in barracks, too, matters a lot and the atmosphere.”
In a way, I believe the war in Kashmir with Pakistan-led tribal raiders soon after independence was a godsend. It provided the
Divide and Quit 251
moitar to build a cohesive army and it gave the opportunity to the officers belonging to the so-called non-martial races to provide inspiring leadership to their comrades by offering their lives at the altar of patriotism.
I also learned at the party of the pulls behind the scene on the impending Radclyffe Award. The lawyers representing India had made out a very strong case for incorporation in India of Lahore, which had a Hindu and Sikh population with an edge over the Muslim in size and predominant share of the city’s wealth. The Hindu leaders of the city were so confident that it would come to India that they had advised the non-Muslims to stay put instead of migrating. Further, Lahore had a sentimental appeal to Indian nationalists, for it was on the banks of the Ravi in December 1929 that the Congress resolved to ask for nothing less than independence. It was also the centre of Ayra Samaj, 'the Hindu religious and social reform movement, as well as the biggest Hindu educational centre in the Punjab.
Ironically, it was here too that the League had decided in March 1940 to demand Pakistan, and in offering it to Jinnah Radclyffe seems to have felt that it balanced the award of Calcutta, which the League had demanded for East Pakistan, to India. I gathered that British officials advised Jinnah to pick Lahore in preference to a part of Gurdaspur district which would have cut off India from direct overland communication with Kashmir. They are said to have explained to Jinnah that the League leaders had in any event made plans to occupy Kashmir by force. This story sounded rather odd, but I mentioned it to Patel that evening. His reaction was: “This is Nehru’s charge. We will wait and watch.”
Neither the Congress leaders had visualised the possibility of two sovereign nations existing within the sub-continent, nor had Muslims of the U.P. and Bombay, who had clamoured for a homeland, realised that the creation of an independent Pakistan, separate in all respects, from the Indian Union, would reduce the Muslims of India from a politically significant force to an ineffectual minority and cut them off from their kith and kin across the border. When the holocaust occurred, Gandhi alone stood steadfast while other leaders fumbled and quailed before the storm. But for his superior moral force and martyrdom, which he seemed to have foreseen with his prophetic vision, the whole sub-continent of India would have perished in flames.
Chapter ij
THE FINAL SCENE
The period from 1920 to 1947 was the most significant in the history of British India. Beginning with the Gandhian revolution, it culminated in independence. The crystallisation of the Congress agitation in the Quit India demand brought about the liquidation of alien rule; at the same time the Muslim League’s counter-slogan of “Divide and Quit” led inexorably to the colossal tragedy that accompanied the dawn of freedom—the country’s vivisection, and the holocaust in which half a million people perished and some ten million were uprooted from their homes.
Independence came to India in 1947 unexpectedly, but inevitably. It was the result of three movements which appeared to run parallel.
First, the Gandhian movement of non-violent non-cooperation, which caused such an unprecedented upsurge among the inarticulate masses that the British Raj could be sustained only at the point of the sword.
Second, the ballot box revolution, which contributed to the awakening of the political consciousness of the people. Its byproducts were religious antagonisms and the intensification of class and caste divisions. But the debates in the legislatures, being mostly directed against the Government, provided ammunition to the Gandhians out to rouse mass enthusiasm for freedom.
Third, the two World Wars having debilitated Britain’s economic strength to a point at which defence of the far-flung Empire became an impossible burden, the increasing pressure from the United
L States for the liquidation of colonialism made Britain see the wisdom of cutting her losses and quitting her possessions overseas.
By 1905, when Curzon left, the power struggle had become ’ bipolar, the Congress projecting itself as the alternative power. This ' | phase was intensified with the introduction of the first instalment of responsible government in 1920. It ended with Irwin’s viceroyalty 1931. The Simon Commission’s activities and the pressures
m
developed during three successive Round Table Conferences rendered the power struggle pentangular, the British, the Congress,
The Final Scene 253
the Muslims, the Hindu depressed classes and the Princes constituting the rival claimants to power.
Ihe power struggle, however, became triangular in 1940, when Linlithgow, acting under Amery’s instructions, placed a veto on a constitutional settlement in the hands of the leader of the Muslim League. As inner Tory circles put it, this was Britain’s Crescent Card.
The fortunes of war and Japan’s threat to India made London realise that India was a lost dominion. The Crescent Card, instead of being a trump in British hands, served to make the struggle once again bipolar in 1945 during the regime of Wavell. The contenders were the Congress and the League, the British having decided to quit.
Who conceded Pakistan? Some name one person, some the other. But, in point of fact, there is no simple, straight answer.
Both the Congress and the Raj for their own reasons were keen on maintaining a united India, but both were walking the slippery path of winning the support of the third side of India’s power triangle: Muslims. Whitehall unconsciously first planted the seed of partition by conceding separate electorate and communal representation, in Minto’s words, to the Muslim “nation.”
Following the outbreak of World War II, which caught the Congress unprepared for its political repercussions, Gandhi was the first to concede to the Muslims at the Ramgarh Congress session in 1940 the right of separation as in a Hindu joint family. He suggested the setting up of a Constituent Assembly based on adult franchise and proposed that the Muslim members be allowed to decide whether they wished to live separately or as members of a joint family. Gandhi’s offer was essentially a move in the political game of outbidding and outwitting the British.
The British outbid Gandhi in August 1940 when Leopold Amery, through Linlithgow, placed in Jinnah’s hands a veto on advance to self-government. This was done both to ride over the period of war and checkmate the Congress. But it had the effect of fixing a pointer to the road to partition.
When Japan entered the war towards the close of 1941 and its warships appeared in the Bay of Bengal, C.R. got his followers in Madras to pass a resolution formally conceding the claim for Pakistan made by the League in its Lahore resolution of March 1940. Although adopted to enable the formation of a national government to resist the Japanese, the resolution was repudiated promptly by the A.I.C.C., which reaffirmed its faith in a united India.
Nehru came next, when American pressure made Churchill despatch Cripps to India with a proposal that envisaged partition
as a possibility and gave political content to the veto placed in Jinnah’s hand. The Congress Working Committee rejected the Cripps offer but, in a resolution drafted by Nehru, it formally conceded for the first time the principle that it did not believe in keeping within the Union any area against its expressed wish.
The drift towards partition thereafter received inadvertently a push when Bhulabhai Desai and Liaquat Ali entered into an agreement providing for equal representation to the Congress and the League in the reconstituted Cabinet. Gandhi blessed the proposal but Wavell transformed it into an equality between Muslims and caste Hindus—-as against equality between two political entities. Gandhi then disowned the pact, but the damage was done.
Rajagopalachari now intervened with Gandhi’s blessings to resolve the deadlock by offering the matter of partition to be settled by a referendum. In essence, this gave concrete shape to Gandhi’s plan vaguely enunciated at the Ramgarh session as a tactical move.
Wavell almost succeeded in preserving the unity of India in co-operation with the Congress with his plan for a wartime coalition. But his effort was frustrated at the eleventh hour when Jinnah received the secret offer of “Pakistan on a platter” from his friends in Whitehall and in Delhi.
Nehru, Patel and Prasad next acknowledged and endorsed Jinnah’s two-nation theory in March 1947, by advocating in a resolution adopted by the Congress Working Committee the division of the Punjab into Muslim-majority and Hindu-majority areas. This was done by the three without consulting Gandhi, who reacted sharply and considered this to be an hour of great humiliation.
When Mountbatten found himself running into a blind alley around May 1947, be came up with his partition plan and informally consulted Nehru, who gave his consent to it. As Mountbatten himself stated in his Nehru Memorial Lecture: “. . . Nehru realised that this would mean a much earlier transfer of power even though it were to two Governments and left a good chance for the essential unity of India to be maintained.”
Patel was the first to accept the partition plan at the formal conference of national leaders convened by Mountbatten on 2nd June. Indeed, he gave it his wholehearted support. As Home Minister, Patel had realised that the drift towards partition had gone beyond the point of no return and chaos could be prevented only by conceding Pakistan. If this meant a break with Bapu, he was willing to pay the price—as indicated by him to me in his candid talk referred to earlier.
In the final analysis, the Congress leaders and the party as a whole were too weary to carry on the struggle any further and were, in their heart of hearts, anxious to grasp power and enjoy its fruits without further delay. As Badshah Khan told me in Kabul in 1967 in so many words: “Some of my colleagues in the High Command did toy with the idea of going ahead with the fight. But the majority accepted the view that they might then miss the bus. In the next elections in Britain, it was feared, the Labour might be thrown out of office and the diehard Tories voted back to power . . .”
Unknown at the time, Churchill played a key role in the creation of Pakistan. Following the outbreak of the war, he realised that India could not be held indefinitely and, as revealed by King George VI in his book, His Life and Reign , decided “to give up India to the Indians after the war.” Churchill and his colleagues "decided, at the same time, to save what they could out of the wreckage and it was this conviction that lay behind the offer to Jinnah of “Pakistan on a platter.” Pakistan was expected to give them a foothold in the sub-continent.
Attlee and his colleagues in the Labour Party did not agree with this policy and earnestly attempted to maintain a united India, however fragile its federal structure. But the compulsion of events went beyond the control of the main British and Congress actors in the final scene of the freedom drama. And, destiny helped Jinnah.
Chapter 14
THE AUSPICIOUS HOUR
An interesting hitch arose over the exact timing of the transfer of power. Mountbatten had proposed and Attlee had agreed to 15th August. However, leading astrologers in Delhi suggested that 14th August was more auspicious. Nehru then hit upon an interesting compromise. He called the Constituent Assembly in the afternoon of 14th August and continued its sitting till midnight when, according to Western practice, 15th August took birth and the zero hour was within the auspicious period envisaged by the Hindu calendar. The Constituent Assembly, as the Provisional Parliament, assumed sovereign power at midnight on I4th/i5th August.
Calling upon its members to pledge themselves to serve India and
her people, Nehru said: “We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again.” Earlier, its President, Prasad, said: “To all we give the assurance that it will be our endeavour to end poverty and squalor and its companions, hunger and disease, to abolish distinctions and exploitation and to ensure decent conditions of living.” Prasad was cheered twice, once when he referred to Gandhi as “our beacon light, our guide and philosopher,” and again when he, while expressing sorrow at the separation, sent his good wishes to the people of Pakistan.
Conches were blown on the last stroke of midnight and a cry of “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai” (long live Mahatma Gandhi) echoed throughout the Central Hall of the Council House. In that emotionally charged atmosphere, tears of joy swelled up as I watched the fulfilment of a dream. Nehru moved the adoption of the pledge, and this was seconded by the League Leader Khaliq-uz-Zaman. Supporting the motion, Dr. Radhakrishnan contrasted the British action in quitting India with that of the Prench in Indo-China and the Dutch in Indonesia and expressed admiration, amidst cheers, for the political sagacity and courage of the British people.
The Assembly endorsed Mountbatten’s appointment as GovernorGeneral and adjourned after Mrs. Sucheta Kripalani, who in the sixties became India’s first woman Chief Minister in the U.P., had sung Iqbal’s Hindustan Hamara and the first verse of Jana Gana Mana^ Rabindranath Tagore’s composition which was later adopted as the National Anthem, while Nehru and Prasad went to Government House to give Mountbatten an account of the proceedings.
On the morning of Independence Day, Nehru unfurled the tricolour at Red Port, watched by nearly a million people. They reserved their loudest cheers for a reference to Subhas Bose, who Nehru said, had raised the flag of independence abroad. Men of the Indian National Army and their band participated in the ceremony, and they had the added joy of knowing that the first act of the Nehru Government was to announce the release of I.N.A. prisoners as well as those held for political offences.
As I listened to Nehru, my thoughts went back to my last meeting with Bose—some seventeen years earlier to Lucknow, before his final incarceration by the British and his secret escape to Berlin via Kabul. Bose, young and dynamic, was then very angry and poured out his wrath against Gandhi, whom he said had deliberately backed Nehru to keep him out of the Congress hierarchy. The war, he added, had given him an opportunity to show that action, and not talk, would get freedom. (He later joined the Axis powers and organised the Indian National Army.)
The Auspicious Hour 257
There is no doubt that had Bose not died in an air crash, he would have proved a most formidable rival to Nehru and influenced for the better the course of Indian history after independence. Nehru paid him a compliment by adopting “Jai Hind” (Long live India), the salute of Bose’s I.N.A., as the national salutation and by unfurling the national flag on the Red Fort. Bose’s slogan to his freedom fighters was “Delhi Chalo” (On to Delhi) and he had vowed to plant the tricolour on the Red Fort to the cry of “Jai Hind.” Gandhi for his part, described Bose as a true patriot. But it was too late . . .
I wrote in the Hindustan Times: “Pandit Nehru as the first Prime Minister and Lord Mountbatten as the first Governor-General were the heroes of the drama. They got receptions which any monarch or President would have envied. The outburst of popular joy was like the burst of a dam and the mighty torrent breaking through all barriers.”
Addressing the Constituent Assembly on Independence morning, Mountbatten said, “At this historic moment, let us not forget all that India owes to Mahatma Gandhi—the architect of her freedom through non-violence. We miss his presence here today, and we would have him know how much he is in our thoughts.”
Where indeed was the Mahatma, instead of sharing the joy of his newly liberated countrymen? While the Constituent Assembly was holding its epoch-making midnight session, he was sleeping peacefully in Calcutta after bringing about the miracle of Hindu-Muslim fraternisation in that hate-maddened metropolis. When the Calcutta correspondent of All-India Radio approached Gandhi earlier that night for an Independence Day message, he meaningfully observed: “I have run dry.”
I published in the Hindustan Times a 5,000-word review headed “Journey’s End—Beginning of Another” and carried a box with a quotation from Gandhi and the picture of Nehru shaking hands with Attlee at their meeting in London the previous December. The quotation from Gandhi was headed “The Dharma of Every Indian” and quoted what Gandhi said during the Salt Satyagraha: “British rule in India has brought about moral, material and spiritual ruination of this great country. I regard this rule as a curse. I am out to destroy this system of Government. I have sung the tune of ‘God save the King’ and have taught others to sing it.
I was a believer in the policy of petitions, deputations and friendly negotiations. But all these have gone to the dogs. I know that these are not the ways to bring this Government round. Sedition has become my religion. Ours is a non-violent battle. We are not out to
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kill anybody but it is our ‘Dharma’ to see that the curse of this Government is blotted out.”
Diplomats and other foreigners who were present in New Delhi expressed astonishment at the fact that tens of thousands of joyous Indians, celebrating the end of British rule, should have lustily shouted “Mountbatten ki jai” in honour of the last pro-consul of the departing order. This was a genuine tribute, personally to the glamorous Viceroy and his consort but also to the British as a race, with whom the Hindus had developed a love-hate relationship. The Hindu admired the Briton for his efficiency, business integrity, punctuality, strength of character and parliamentary system of / government. But he detested him as an imperial overlord.
When Cripps came to India with his plan in 1942, he told me that he laid the blame for poisoning Indo-British relations over the years on the Britons and Anglo-Indians who represented the British Press and gave their reports an anti-Congress and anti-Hindu and pro-Muslim or pro-League slant. There was an element of truth in this remark, but after independence I expected the Briton’s business acumen to come out on top and teach him that in close friendship with India lay his best chance of sustaining his economic strength and influence in international diplomacy.
I even dreamed of a commonwealth revolving on a London-Delhi axis and constituting a third force in world affairs. The Mountbattens, Edwina even more than Dicky, were to Nehru and most other Indian intellectuals the idealised image of this new relationship. But Indian well-wishers of Britain counted without the Blimps of the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office, and the Indo-British honeymoon therefore lasted only six months officially, although unofficially it lasted longer between Nehru and the Mountbattens.
I was a witness at very close quarters of this pulsating drama, the ebb and flow of the struggle for freedom. I knew intimately the men and women who shared its hazards and rewards. Twas bliss to be alive in those stirring times.