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Chapter i
TRYST WITH DESTINY
(a) THE BRITISH LEGACY
With Nehru’s words about India’s tryst with destiny ringing in my ears, as in those of millions of my countrymen, I pondered over the shape of things to come. I had written in my enthusiasm that “on 15th August, 1947, Delhi, the capital of several empires, became for the first time the seat o ELok Raj —government of the people, by the people, for the people.” It seemed clear on that historic day that Indian nationalism was an all-pervasive force, that we had inherited a going concern and that we were endowed with the leadership that would take the nation along the path that led to the promised land. But beneath the surface were strong under-currents, communal, caste, linguistic, parochial, social and economic, all of which may be summed up in the phrase “rising expectations.”
One of Gandhi’s remarks haunted me. He had said to me, describing his differences with Nehru: “Jawahar wants Englishmen to go but Angreziat (English ways and culture) to stay. I want Angreziat to go and' Englishmen to stay as our friends.” Gandhi wanted to rid India of the Western culture which had been imposed on the country and had stifled the older and more natural Indian cultural and social traditions. Nehru, although the idol of the masses, was aloof from them mentally. He was an Englishman in Indian skin. After independence, the conflict between these diametrically opposed approaches was swept under the carpet to meet the upheaval caused by the partition. Gandhi, as moral force and mentor, stood rocklike amid the raging storm of patriotic emotions and communal rivalries. Mountbatten was the symbol of captaincy, beaming a confidence which was infectious and imparting a dynamism which almost moved mountains. There was Jawaharlal, the darling of the nation, the new ruler and the refuge of the minorities. The Iron Man, Patel, inspired trust in those days of uncertainty. He drew to himself the elements that would, under his leadership, hold the country together and weld it into a nation. Rajendra Prasad was the embodiment of Gandhian humility and the spirit of selfless service.
How did people at various social levels react to the dawn of Swaraj ? Two hundred thousand people had swirled round Council House when the Constituent Assembly assumed power. A millionthroated cry of “Jai Hind” had gone up when Nehru unfurled the national flag on the ramparts of Red Fort, built by the same Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan who fashioned the Taj Mahal as his wife’s mausoleum. Half a million people milled round India Gate when the flag was broken and Mountbatten and Nehru saluted it. I went among people in various walks of life to find out what freedom meant to them to get an idea of the vision of the future they had and the hopes that swelled in their breasts. Everybody said Gandhi was the architect of India’s freedom. “We will now have Ram Raj,” the common man said. Among the thousands of village folk who had come to Delhi for the mela (celebration), I asked one why he had done so and he replied: “To have the darshan (sight of a venerated person) of Raja Jawaharlal.”
(b) DOUBTS AND FEARS
The reaction of officers of the all-India services, especially the ICS, was very significant. This was the only category of people who put a question mark on the shape of things to come. One group told me they would happily change over to the Gandhi cap and resort to simple living and adjust their habits accordingly.
The other group said the service tradition and code of conduct must be maintained as before in the interest of stability and good government. They asserted that the pivot of British parliamentary institutions was the Civil Service and that political bosses could come and go without making much difference so long as the civilians were honest, efficient and had the incentive to work well. In short, they felt that the “steel frame” character of the administration should be retained intact. The politician in charge could depend on them to execute his policy so long as he did not meddle with the administrative machine.
But from their experience of the interim Government they were not sure that things would turn out as they wanted. Already, the element of durbar (paying court to one’s superior) was creeping in and some Civil Servants were becoming too closely associated with their bosses and ignoring the rules of the game.
The politicians I tapped for their views were of three categories. The giants were loyal to Gandhi to a man, but they felt a growing estrangement from the Mahatma in that the business of government had made them abandon their Gandhian ideals both under political
and administrative compulsions as well as under their own personal craving to wield power as the British had done and to live like the ‘ White Sahibs (Master).” They could not resolve this conflict, and the more Gandhi spelled out his views at his daily prayer meetings on how they should conduct themselves the more they shrank from his commandments. In fact, they charged him in private with attempting to exercise power without responsibility. Those in the second rank openly exhibited their itch for power and pelf, and those at the bottom rungs of the political hierarchy also saw in the advent of freedom the long-awaited opportunity to cash in on their sacrifices for the cause.
Businessmen too were divided in their reactions to the new order. A majority of traders and bankers had the traditional outlook: “Our forefathers have told us a bania is not made to be a ruler. He buys security by buying the ruler.” Sophisticated businessmen put it thus: “Politicians need funds for elections and they want jobs for their relatives. They have ambitions. We cater for them. We have already learned during the war how to get things done at the lower and higher echelons of the Secretariat.” The younger executives felt differently. They said: “Democracy in the West is run by men drawn from business and the professions. Modern government is too complex a machine to be left to the mercy of ignoramuses, be they saints or political charlatans. We must jump into the arena to make sure the Government is well run.”
(c) EXODUS
My preoccupation with these matters seemed, however, academic, for hardly had the echoes of “Jai Hind” died in the capital than the nation was plunged in sorrow as reports came in hourly of millions of refugees on the march and of dreadful carnage on both sides of the India-Pakistan border. About ten million people were uprooted from their homes and another half a million massacred. Thousands of women and girls were kidnapped and raped on both sides.
Within fifteen days of independence, Nehru and Liaquat Ali decided to fly to Lyallpur and Lahore, in West Punjab, to study the refugee problem. A small Press party accompanied them. We took off from Amritsar and landed at Lyallpur, where half a million Hindus and Sikhs begged for safe passage to India. It was the day of Rakhi, when a Hindu sister ties a thread round her brother’s wrist, thus committing him to defend her honour. A dozen women came to the Circuit House, where we had made our headquarters, and tied the symbolic thread on Nehru. The act brought tears to our eyes, and
264 The Nehru Era
Nehru was visibly moved. He responded to their plea that he fly over Jhang and Chiniot to lift up the thousands of refugees who had gathered there from the despair in which they had been plunged. As our Dakota passed over these places, we saw huge crowds looking up at the aircraft and we could almost feel a vast sigh rise upward to meet it.
This trip delayed our arrival at Lahore airfield by ninety minutes. There I met the Governor, Sir Francis Mudie, who had been Home Member under Wavell, and Giani Kartar Singh. “What the devil are you doing here?” Mudie asked me in a voice betraying panic. “To see what the Frankenstein monster you and we all have let loose has done to innocent people,” I retorted. He snapped back: “You wanted independence. Now you have it.” The deputation who met the two Prime Ministers said this was the refrain of many British officers to whom they had appealed for protection. Giani Kartar Singh was in tears and appealed to Nehru to save the hundreds of thousands of Flindus and Sikhs who had gathered in various towns in West Punjab, seeking protection in numbers. He seemed repentant for the part he had played in working up communal passions.
Most touching were the replies of the refugees whom we spoke to when we came across a long caravan on the way to India along the road through Sheikhupura, where the worst slaughter had occurred. An old peasant said: “This country has seen many changes of rulers. They have come and gone. But this is the first time that with a change of rulers the riyaya (subjects) is also being forced to change— and flee their homes.” An elderly woman, not aware she was addressing Nehru but judging him an important personage from his dress and demeanour, said: “Partitions take place in all families. Property changes hands, but it is all arranged peacefully. Why this butchery, loot and abductions ? Gould you not do it the sensible way families divided?”
I talked to politicians, Civil Servants and military officers on both sides and came to the conclusion, as I wrote in the Hindustan Times , “that while the communal orgy of March 1947 was the result of the Muslim League’s preaching of violence and hatred the holocaust of the past three weeks is the work of the civil officials and the police and military.” I added that, “there was little to choose between West Punjab and East Punjab. By dividing the Army, the police and the Civil Service on communal lines, they let loose a Frankenstein.” I concluded my report by stating that Mountbatten had hurried through with partition without making sure that the Boundary Force would be able to maintain peace.
Tryst with Destiny 265
The Hindu and Sikh officials who had migrated from West Punjab after witnessing the orgy of murder and destruction in that region had permitted it to be avenged in the eastern part. The state of affairs can well be imagined from the fact that because of the communal break-up of the provincial services the police force in East Punjab had dwindled from 17,000 to 3,000. The magnitude of the tragedy struck me with full force when I visited the camp at Kurukshetra, a few miles from Delhi, where 270,000 refugees from West Punjab had been sheltered in tents and makeshift dwellings, and saw the fifteen-mile-long caravan of the displaced and dispossessed moving towards India from Montgomery district.
An intelligence official, Rai Bahadur Bakshi Badri Nath, who was in charge of Muslim League activities, gave me an account of a conspiracy to extend Pakistan’s boundary up to the river Jumna. When the administrative changeover took place, every East Punjab district had a predominantly Muslim constabulary, and the Leaguers decided that they should capture the police armouries between 12th and 14th August, kill the Hindu and Sikh officers and declare the area independent of India. This information leaked out. The Hindu officers met and decided to station more of their number wherever British and Muslim officers predominated. By 5th August, these postings had been made and the Muslim constables, except for some who fled with their rifles, were disarmed. The result of this action was that the Muslims in East Punjab became demoralised. They felt they could not save themselves from mob violence. In Amritsar Fort police lines, a hundred bombs were found in the possession of a Muslim police officer, who revealed on questioning the plan to revolt and seize the territory up to the river Jumna. That was why Sardar Patel said he had evidence that the Muslims were preparing to kill the Hindus and Sikhs in the Punjab. One letter conveying these instructions to the Muslim Leaguers in Montgomery was intercepted. It said that the League leaders would appeal for stopping the killing, but such appeals should be ignored unless they received a message on a secret telephone which had been installed for this purpose.
V. Vishwanathan, who was in Geneva with the Palestine Commission, was appointed Deputy High Commissioner in Pakistan. Relations between the two countries deteriorated so badly that there was no air service between them and he had to fly in Mountbatten’s special plane with Lord Listowel. In Karachi, he found such enthusiasm for Pakistan that every taxi carried a national flag on its bonnet. Karachi was seething with anti-India hysteria, but he managed to organise the movement of 900,000 Hindus and Sikhs
out of West Pakistan. On his own initiative, he requisitioned ships belonging to Indian lines, saying he was doing so on the authority of the Indian Government. The greater problem he faced was the fact that the very presence of Sikhs provoked riots and murder. There were 600 Sikhs in a regiment in Maler Cantonment under a British officer, who proposed to disarm them and send them by train to India. Vishwanathan knew they would all be slaughtered on the way. So he chartered a ship, smuggled the Sikhs on board when it was dark and sent them to Dwarka in Gujarat. From there they were taken to Ahmedabad and Delhi.
(d) PULLING IN DIFFERENT WAYS
Four special articles I wrote in the last week of September 1947, comparing political conditions in India and Pakistan, said that the manner in which the two countries were reacting politically and emotionally suggested that before long Pakistan would become another Iran and India would go the way of Chiang’s China. I envisioned government by politicians for politicians in India, and in Pakistan rule by Civil Servants, army officers and the landed aristocracy for themselves. The sanction behind the Indian politician was the people’s trust in him and the mass base of the Congress Party, which spread its roots to the remotest village. The Muslim masses had played no part in the manoeuvres and haggling for Pakistan, nor had the Muslim politicians who jumped on Jinnah’s bandwagon when they learned that their British patrons were quitting and were, furthermore, encouraged to do so by these same patrons.
Jinnah set the pattern of thinking at the top in Pakistan by making Mountbatten agree to a vital change in the law extending the Indian Independence Act to Pakistan by providing that in choosing and summoning Ministers the Governor of a province “shall be under the general control of and comply with such particular direction, if any, as may from time to time be given to him by the Governor-General.” This was personal dictatorship assumed by the progenitor of Pakistan.
A factor, invisibly at work, was the purpose that Britons in both dominions wanted them to serve. Those in Pakistan wanted her to look towards West Asia and to assume, with her superior intellectual development, her greater social advance, modernised administrative set-up and better-trained army, leadership of an Islamic bloc under the aegis of the British Commonwealth. So every move that helped loosen the ties between India and Pakistan was welcomed, even
devised by Britons who headed the majority of departments of the Government of Pakistan.
Mountbatten, on the other hand, personified the broader objective of Whitehall of nourishing India’s strength so that she would become the balancing factor in the Indian Ocean area, particularly in SouthEast Asia. Thus the vengeful attitude of some British officials who stayed on in the sub-continent to see it dissolve in chaos did not reflect the thinking of the British Government.
Foreign observers, surveying Indian developments with trained and generally detached outlook, found before 1947 was out that Gandhi, Patel and Prasad stood for one policy in domestic and international affairs, Nehru for another. The rank and file Congressmen sided with the trio, the Communists and Socialists with Nehru. But to the unsophisticated masses, newcomers to the political arena, Nehru’s denunciation of affluence did not seem to conflict with Gandhi’s identification of himself with the poor and the downtrodden and his belief in social and economic advance through Sarvodaya, which sought to convert the haves into selfless trustees and benefactors of the have-nots.
Chapter 2
RESETTLING THE REFUGEES
I sponsored the cause of the refugees, whose sufferings I knew as one providing refuge to two families, those of my wife’s sister and of my own sister. Prominent refugees met at the Hindustan Times office and decided to organise the Punjab Reconstruction Committee with Bakshi Tek Chand, former Chief Justice of Lahore High Court, as its chairman and me as its convener. We arranged interviews with the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Finance Minister, the Defence Minister, the Minister for Public Works and the Minister for Relief and Rehabilitation.
Our main contention was that whereas the refugees who arrived up to the middle of September brought personal effects like cash and jewellery those who followed had been stripped of everything they possessed. We feared that while the agriculturists among the refugees would be compensated with land left behind by Muslim evacuees to the extent of their assets, the non-agriculturists would
not be able to get even a tenth of their losses from the Muslim property left behind in the towns. We therefore pressed for fulfilment of the agreement reached by Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan for the exchange in military trucks and under armed escort of the movable assets left on both sides.
We waited in deputation on Nehru at 4 p.m. on Saturday, 20th September, 1947, in his room in the External Affairs Ministry. The following extract from the minutes I drew up of the meeting are significant in the light of later developments:
“Mr. Yodhraj, Chairman of the Punjab National Bank, began by explaining the need for an area of several hundred acres to be set apart for a residential colony at a distance of about seven miles from Delhi. Pandit Nehru’s immediate reaction was one of opposition. T won’t let you come within 700 miles of Delhi,’ he interjected angrily because of his grievance against the Punjabis, who, he thought, were responsible for the disturbances in Delhi. He mentioned that these disorders had brought the Government a very bad name all over the world and upset their programme with regard to certain Princely States. Bakshi Tek Chand explained the vital bearing of the question of a residential colony and an industrial area on the settlement of refugees. The question of an early decision in regard to the capital of East Punjab was also raised. Pandit Nehru thereupon realised that a good case had been made and began to take notes.
“Pandit Nehru was firmly of the opinion that the new capital for East Punjab should not be Delhi or any place in close proximity to Delhi. If near Delhi, it would not have the chance of healthy growth as the centre of an autonomous provincial government. He said it was really a matter for the people of East Punjab to decide, but he appreciated the urgent need of settling it. He personally favoured the establishment of a capital on a new site instead of selecting an existing town. That would, he said, give a chance for the capital to be developed on modern lines. (His views prevailed in the end and led to the birth of Chandigarh.)
“Mr. Durga Das mentioned the problem of Sikhs and said that steps should be taken now to make sure that this problem did not take a serious form later. The Sikhs should be asked to state categorically whether they wished to have a small province of their own in which they would have a majority. If so, the refugees should from now be settled in such a manner as would fulfil this desire of the Sikhs. If the Sikhs wished to live as citizens of India,
Resettling the Refugees 269
it should be made clear to them that they would not have any special privileges, legislative, administrative, or by convention. They must sink or swim with the Hindus under a system of joint electorates.
“Pandit Nehru, replying, said that Master Tara Singh had met him the previous day and that he had asked the Sikh leader whether his community wanted Khalistan (a Sikh State). Pandit Nehru said he had never seen Master Tara Singh so crestfallen as on that day. The Sikh leader vehemently protested against any idea of Khalistan and said that the Sikhs, being a very small section of the people of India, would not pick any quarrel with them. They wished to remain citizens of India and live with the Hindus as brothers.”
(Although the deputation pleaded for facilities to settle 50,000 families, ultimately half a million families found refuge in Delhi. Indeed, the city’s expansion to embrace an area far exceeding the seven capitals of the old empires is largely the result of the enterprise of these refugees from the Punjab.)
A deputation of the committee had met Patel a day earlier. The meeting, which began at 8.30 p.m. at Patel’s residence, lasted an hour. The main issue discussed was protection of the Indian border. The following extract reveals the mind and methods of the Iron Man:
“Sardar Patel gave a full picture of the situation and the measures taken by the Government. He said that the Pakistan Prime Minister had that day met him and Pandit Nehru. It was clear, he said, that Pakistan was not in a position either to declare war on India or to organise raids on our border. Nevertheless, the Government of India had taken measures to be ready for all contingencies. He had ordered all the ordnance factories to work twenty-four hours a day and produce arms and ammunition.
“Sardar Patel further informed the committee that he had told the Pakistan Prime Minister to declare his policy regarding the property of Hindus and Sikhs left behind. If Pakistan wanted to write off all such property, India would then be free to do the same in respect of Muslim property. Otherwise, Pakistan must take the responsibility for compensation. He also made it clear to Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan that if no Hindus and Sikhs remained in Pakistan, it was difficult to see how Muslims could remain in India. In a word, the policy of the Indian Government was to pay the Pakistan Government in the same coin.”
Another interesting meeting was with the Defence Minister Baldev Singh, at 8 a.m. on Friday, 26th September, at his residence. He admitted that law and order had broken down in the countryside in East Punjab, due to lack of armed forces. He mentioned with regret that public leaders, magistrates and the military and police had all made common cause on both sides in promoting the holocaust.
To add to the agony of partition came the Pakistani-inspired attack on Kashmir by tribal hordes from the North-West Frontier area. The meagre forces of Maharaja Hari Singh withered under the surprise onslaught and he fled from Srinagar to Jammu. He appealed to Nehru for help and, shedding the earlier policy of fence-sitting, offered the accession of his state to the Indian Dominion. Nehru hurriedly consulted Mountbatten and Patel and it was decided with Gandhi’s consent to accept accession and fly out troops in Dakotas across the treacherous Banihal Pass to save Srinagar and the Valley. It was touch and go. The marauders had reached the outskirts of Srinagar and were heading for the airport. However, luck was on India’s side and a near-impossible situation was miraculously saved by the troops. Sheikh Abdullah’s endorsement of the accession in his capacity as the leader of Kashmir’s principal political party, the National Conference, lent moral weight to India’s deed. (It was this role of the Sheikh that Jinnah had dreaded most. He had made a vain bid to win over Abdullah before Independence. He was manifestly sore on his return from Srinagar. Asked what he thought of the Sheikh, he contemptuously remarked: “Oh, that tall man who sings the Koran and exploits the people?”)
Simultaneously, India approached the U.N. Security Council for action against Pakistan, little realising then that the simple and straight-forward issue of aggression would get bogged down in world power politics. Who precisely originated the idea that India should take the Kashmir question to the Security Council (described by Patel as “Insecurity Council”) is not clear. Some at the time mentioned the name of Mountbatten and others that of Nehru and his key official advisers. The British wanted the state to go to Pakistan. Mountbatten advised the Maharaja to accede to either of the dominions and added, on the authority of Patel, that if he chose to join Pakistan, India would not object.
Jinnah’s British advisers and fanatical followers were determined to get Kashmir for Pakistan. This was more than evident from the way they conducted themselves. The Army, for instance, had ordered prior to independence a large number of maps of Kashmir from the Survey of India. At the time of partition, these were
Constitution Making 2 71
quietly handed over by British officers to Pakistan. Worse still, Indian officials discovered at the time of taking over that all the records of Military Intelligence and most of those of the Central Intelligence Bureau relating to the state were also missing. Equally significantly, Gilgit, which was under two British officers, “revolted” against the Maharaja and declared itself independent. Today, Gilgit is a part of the Kashmir territory now under Pakistan’s illegal occupation.
Chapter 3
CONSTITUTION MAKING
A ticklish constitutional problem arose on 15th August, 1947, and Nehru put it jokingly to me in Parliament’s lobby: “Mavalankar has vanished into thin air.” He was referring to the provision in the Indian Independence Act under which the Legislative Assembly, of which G. V. Mavalankar was President, automatically dissolved on Independence Day and the Constituent Assembly became the supreme sovereign and legislative body. The question arose how Rajendra Prasad, a member of the Cabinet as well as the President of the Constituent Assembly, could preside over the deliberations of that body when it functioned as a legislature.
Both Nehru and Patel felt that Prasad should continue in the Cabinet and another President should be chosen for the Constituent Assembly. When Nehru took the stand that it would be intolerable in a democracy for a Minister to preside, Benegal Narsing Rau proposed that a Deputy Speaker be elected to preside over the Assembly in the name of the President of the Constituent Assembly. This led to tension between Patel and Prasad and resulted in a sharp exchange in the Cabinet. A Civil Servant who attended the meeting told me: “These men whom we adored as giants quarrelled like children.” The dispute was referred to Gandhi, a bare week before his assassination. Prasad wanted to make a statement in the Constituent Assembly; Gandhi sent for it and modified it. Prasad accepted the changes, saying: “I stand for harmony and therefore do not press my point.” Gandhi’s terse comment, conveyed to me by Devadas, was: “Even Rajen Babu is lured by power. I feel disillusioned.”
272 The Nehru Era
At this point, another issue was raised: “What would be Prasad’s position on the legislative side and Mavalankar’s as Speaker ? Reluctantly, Prasad agreed to the election of another Speaker, provided he was subordinate to the President of the Constituent Assembly. Mavalankar demanded equality of status and full control over his Secretariat. Prasad yielded after a hard struggle, retaining the Presidentship of the Constituent Assembly, and Mavalankar took over as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly.
But the squabble did not end there. At the instance of Gandhi, Nehru suggested that Prasad become President of the Congress Party. Prasad objected strongly to what appeared to him an attempt to push him out of the Cabinet and Presidentship of the Constituent Assembly. For some time it appeared as though he would repudiate the agreement over Mavalankar’s appointment. When Nehru dropped the proposal and Prasad’s ruffled feelings had been soothed, still more difficulties were encountered. Rau took away the Legislative Assembly Secretariat, and Prasad ruled that the new staff could not be appointed without his sanction. The matter was referred to Nehru who then got Prasad to delegate to Mavalankar the authority to appoint staff. Later, a provision was written into the Constitution making the Parliament Secretariat independent of the Government.
Meanwhile, I watched, analysed and commented on the progress of the Constituent Assembly in fashioning the instrument of government and the tense drama over six issues of a delicate and controversial nature.
Should adult franchise be introduced, involving an increase in the electorate from 35 million to 170 million? Maulana Azad advocated its deferment for fifteen years. Prasad and Nehru plumped for adult franchise as an act of faith. The vote favouring it was carried amidst acclamation.
Nehru favoured incorporation of a section establishing a special relationship with the State of Jammu and Kashmir, thus inferentially recognising the state’s right to frame its own constitution within the Indian Union. Patel wanted the State to be fully integrated with the Union. The Cabinet was divided on the issue and the trend of opinion in the Constituent Assembly favoured the Sardar’s stand. But when the matter came before the Assembly, Patel put the unity and solidarity of the Government before everything else and backed the Nehru formula.
The most delicate issue related to safeguards for minorities. Azad wanted reservation of seats for the Muslims and other minorities within the framework of general electorates. Patel opposed such
above Left to right: Radhakrishnan, Nehru and Shastri
below Jinnah speaking.into the microphone at a reception given at India House in December 1946. Nehru, wearing the European dress for which he had been criticised, is second from Jinnah’s right
Gandhi with Lord and Lady Mountbatten in the spring of 1947
Constitution Making 273
safeguards. Nehru left it to Patel to jump the hurdle as Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Minorities. Two women members played a key role in this high-strung drama. Amrit Kaur, speaking for the Indian Christians, said that reservation of seats and weightage based on religion or sect would lead to fragmentation of the Indian Union. The Sikhs demanded the same treatment as given to the Muslims.
After the Committee had wrestled with the problem for weeks, Patel decided to clinch the issue at its final meeting. He called on Begum Aizaz Rasul of Lucknow to state the Muslim view. She was a zealous Muslim Leaguer before partition and had even gone to the length of giving up saree and adopting the costume worn by the Begums of Oudh. The Muslims left behind in India, she said nervously, were an integral part of the nation and needed no safeguards. Patel seized this crucial moment to declare that the Muslims were unanimously in favour of joint electorates and adjourned the meeting.
Much heat was generated on whether the President of the Republic and Governors of the constituent states should be elected by popular vote and whether they should have discretionary powers. Legal luminaries and constitutional pundits had a field day, but Nehru and Patel brought a practical approach to bear on the issue. They opposed popularly elected heads. Indeed, Nehru as Prime Minister took steps to see that the Union President even though chosen by an electoral college consisting of all the members of the Central and State Legislatures, would be a constitutional figurehead. Patel as Home Minister made sure that Governor of a state was the nominee of the Union Government and had enough discretionary powers to act as the executive agent of the Centre in an emergency.
The question of a national link language posed the most difficult hurdle. Swami Dayananda and Mahatma Gandhi, both from Gujarat, and Tilak and Savarkar, from Maharashtra, had zealously pleaded for Hindi as the symbol of nationhood. Prasad and Patel strongly supported Hindi, while Nehru left it to the Hindi lobby to work out a formula acceptable to the non-Hindi regions, especially Madras and Bengal. Finally, the formula providing for replacement of English by Hindi in fifteen years was embodied in the Constitution, although each side did it with mental reservation.
A great deal of excitement was caused over the issue: Should the Fundamental Right to be embodied in the Constitution guarantee fair payment for private property acquired by the State and should the right be made justiciable? Nehru was against making the right justiciable. Patel stood rocklike for the Fundamental Rights adopted
I.F.C.N. s
by the Congress Party under his Presidentship in 1931 in Karachi. After a prolonged tug-of-war Patel won because he had the backing of the distinguished lawyers, who were fashioning the Constitution, and of the overwhelming majority of members of the Constituent Assembly. (This right was somewhat diluted by an amendment of the Constitution after Patel’s death in order to facilitate land reforms involving abolition of the feudal system of landlordism.)
The Constitution-makers swept under the carpet the important matter relating to the scheduled tribes in the Assam hills in the north-east. They adopted a formula virtually placing the region outside the pale of normal Union laws and administrative apparatus. Nehru did this on the advice of Christian missionaries. His colleagues in the top echelons let it pass, treating the matter, in the words of Azad, as “a Nehru fad.”
Chapter 4
THE PASSING OF THE MAHATMA
Gandhi had his own ideas of how Congressmen should live and behave after freedom had been achieved. He was in Calcutta on Independence Day, when the huge crowd celebrating the occasion around Chowringhee burst through the gates of Raj Bhavan, the official residence of the Governor, and took whatever they could lay their hands on. Gandhi seized on the opportunity to read a sermon to Rajagopalachari, the Governor of West Bengal, and his counterparts in the other provinces. He wanted them to abandon the gubernatorial mansions associated with foreign rule and reside simply in cottages, inexpensively furnished, spin yarn by hand, abstain from liquor and speak only Hindustani and the language of the province.
Communal trouble flared up in Calcutta again in September, and Gandhi resorted to another fast, which had the required effect. C.R., who had at first ridiculed the idea of Gandhi fasting to deter goondas (hoodlums), admitted that this method of protest had produced truly wonderful results. By now, Delhi was in the throes of the upheaval caused by the incoming refugees from West Punjab and their local sympathisers to push out the Muslims to make room for the newcomers. The Muslim policemen of the city having gone
The Passing of the Mahatma 275
to Pakistan, the Hindu and Sikh members of the force and the magistracy found themselves facing a situation where their sympathies lay with the refugees. Mass murder and destruction of property was launched to terrorise the Muslims to leave the city. Gandhi resolved to rush to Delhi, which he described as a city of the dead where he must make a supreme effort to restore sanity. His sermons at his daily prayer meetings had a powerful effect, but every fresh wave of refugees which poured in, bereft of their possesions and with blood-chilling tales of atrocities committed on them, caused further upheavals.
Patel urged the Pakistanis to change their ways. He pointed out that Jinnah used to call Gandhi the greatest enemy of the Muslims, but now Pakistanis were acclaiming Gandhi their sole protector and benefactor. Anxious to restore confidence in the minorities, Patel had earlier accepted Wavell’s advice and agreed to have a Muslim Chief Commissioner, a Christian Inspector-General of Police and a Sikh Deputy Commissioner for Delhi. But when trouble erupted in a big way, Patel confessed to me that he had made a mistake in accepting the advice. This balance was all right in normal times, but once the communal holocaust occurred the Chief Commissioner and the head of the police became ineffective.
A crisis occurred around New Year. The Partition Council had arrived at several decisions regarding the division of assets. A financial agreement between India and Pakistan had also been reached and it had been further decided that all the outstanding disputes which eluded settlement be referred to an arbitration tribunal. Accord was subsequently reached on all points, including the withdrawal of Pakistani raiders from Kashmir, and Patel made a statement in Parliament that the agreement would have to be implemented fully. The Pakistani leaders changed their mind on Kashmir, insisting at the same time that India honour the financial clauses of the agreement, which included the payment of cash balances amounting to Rs. 550 million to Pakistan. Patel took a firm stand against turning over this sum to Pakistan until the other provisions of the pact were honoured and the Finance Minister, Shammukham Chetty, strongly backed him.
When Pakistan’s Prime Minister said this was an attempt to “strangulate” his country, C. D. Deshmukh, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and Pakistan, saw Gandhi and pointed out that Pakistan had been provided with the required ways and means. Liaquat Ali’s charge, he added, was a political stunt. But Gandhi, who had made the restoration of peace and harmony in Delhi an issue on which he staked his life, announced an indefinite fast at this
stage. Word went round that the fast was directed against Patel’s decision to withhold the cash balances. Mountbatten and Nehru were, in fact, known to have told Gandhi that India was morally bound to transfer the balances to Pakistan and that, as both Patel and Chetty had adopted an unbending position on the issue, he alone could save the situation. Patel finally yielded and Gandhi broke his fast at the behest of leaders of all communities.
Gandhi had felt obliged to stay at Birla House rather than at Bhangi (Sweepers) Colony because Muslims could approach him there with greater safety. He said it was a shame that Dr. Ansari’s daughter and son-in-law (now Governor of Orissa) had to seek shelter in a hotel and men like Zakir Husain (now President of the Republic) could not move about freely in the capital. Before long, Gandhi’s presence in the capital had its sobering effect and as the situation progressively improved, he told me one day that he had decided to visit Pakistan accompanied by General Shah Nawaz Khan of the I.N.A. They had planned to leave in mid-February. He wanted the Hindus and Sikhs and Muslims restored to their homes.
But it was not only the communal situation that troubled Gandhi in those months following independence. He was also deeply concerned about the rot that was setting into the Congress Party. He had received information that some Congress legislators were taking money from businessmen to get them licences, that they were indulging in blackmarketing and subverting the judiciary and intimidating top officials to secure transfers and promotions for their proteges in the administration. Gandhi thought of a remedy for this alarming state of affairs. He called together representatives of such autonomous organisations as the All-India Spinners Association, the Harijan Sevek Sangh (Society for service to the Untouchables) the Village Industries Association, the Goseva Sangh (Cow Protection Society) and the Nai Talimi Sangh (New Education Society), all of which he had either founded or with which he was closely connected, for a conference in Delhi. Among those who attended were Zakir Husain and Kripalani.
Gandhi told the conference that he wanted to organise a coordinating committee on which all these bodies would be represented to screen candidates for election to Parliament and the provincial legislatures and certify their integrity and selfless spirit of service to the community. This would guide voters in their choice of suitable persons to speak on their behalf in the nation’s political forums. The members of these organisations, which were engaged in constructive social work among the masses, were to keep out of politics themselves. But Gandhi’s proposals did not appeal to the
conference, as most of the participants thought they should remain politically inactive and some felt they should put themselves up for election.
After this conference, Gandhi felt more isolated than ever from the men who claimed to follow him and practise his precepts. He felt like one exploited by his comrades for their political ends and therefore hit on a revolutionary plan. The Congress must dissolve and a Lok Seva Sangh (Servants of the People Society) take its place. He drew up a constitution for the Sangh and decided to place it before the Congress overlords. But the assassin’s bullet ended Gandhi’s life with both tasks to which he had dedicated himself unfinished. He could neither restore peace and goodwill between India and Pakistan nor could he purge Indian politics of its corrupting influences.
By a cruel stroke of luck, I missed the prayer meeting where Gandhi was assassinated. I rarely missed these evening meetings and occasionally followed them up with a brief chat with Bapu as he took his evening stroll. But on that day my mind was preoccupied with a bigger story, in fact the biggest and the most important politically after independence.
Two days earlier I had met Azad and learned from him that tension between Nehru and Patel had mounted to a point where the Prime Minister had angrily thumped the table at a Cabinet meeting and said: “Patel, you do what you like. I will not have it.” Patel, according to Azad, did not react and remained quiet. But all the Ministers around the table and the senior officials in the room clearly saw that a crisis had developed.
Nehru’s outburst was basically sparked by the feeling, fed by his courtiers and hangers-on, that Patel was taking the country to the Right. Time and again, it was whispered into the Prime Minister’s ears that Muslims were being harassed by Civil Servants who enjoyed the Sardar’s protection, and that Princes and capitalists were basking in the sunshine of the Iron Man’s patronage. In other words, Nehru was accused by his courtiers of permitting communal and reactionary forces to be on the ascendant under his very nose.
When I called on Patel the following day, he told me that Nehru had “lost his head” and he, for his part, had made up his mind not to stand “the nonsense any more.” He said he was going to see Gandhi and tell him he was quitting. I said Bapu would never agree to let him go and recalled how he had referred to him and Nehru as the two oxen that must pull the governmental cart. Patel quietly replied: “The old man has gone senile. He wants Mountbatten to bring Jawahar and me together.”
Accordingly, Patel called on Gandhi on the fateful day and was closetted with Bapu longer than scheduled and even caused him to delay his attendance at the prayer meeting. To chase the story, I left my office for Patel’s residence instead of going to Birla House and told Devadas to meet Bapu and get his version in case I was held up. When I arrived there, I learned that Bapu had been shot and that the Sardar had left for Birla House.
When I reached Birla House, Gandhi was dead. I went into the room where he lay and touched his feet. Devadas was already there, and I sped back to the office to bring out a supplement carrying the tragic, nation-shattering news which shocked the whole world. It was almost time for the next day’s edition to be despatched by rail to outstation centres and it was impossible to change the editorial. I, therefore, wrote a 500-word bylined article on Gandhi for the front page under terrific emotional strain and with but a few minutes to the deadline for copy. I said: Gandhi’s weapon of soul force which had proved stronger than the atom bomb was the only hope of the world.
The Gandhian era ended on 30th January, 1948, leaving a vacuum that nothing could fill. He was the High Command, the soul force on which the party had built and sustained its hold on the masses. Its leaders depended on him as the court of final appeal and the powerful sanction behind their actions. As with the prophets, each of Gandhi’s chosen disciples took Gandhiism to mean what he had imbibed from the fountainhead of the nationalist movement and could articulate.
To Nehru, it meant crusading for peace and non-violence in the international arena and propagating secularism at home. To Patel, it meant mobilising the nation’s will to preserve its integrity and improve its lot through hard work and harmonious relations between capital and labour. To Prasad and Tandon, Gandhism meant the inculcation of Sanskrit culture, the most important instrument of which was the adoption of Hindi as the national language, and the ascetic Indian way of life. To Vinoba Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan, it meant Sarvodaya , a social philosophy according to which one works for the good of others and shares the rewards of one’s labour in a corporate life.
Gandhi’s ashes were immersed at Triveni, the confluence of the Ganges, the Jumna and the underground Saraswati at Allahabad, because the ashes of his wife, Kasturba, had been deposited there. Nehru, Patel and Prasad participated in the final rites along with Gandhi’ s sons, Ramdas and Devadas. I watched the moving scene closely from a boat carrying newsmen as the holiest of Indian rivers
took to its bosom the remains of the man who had liberated Bharat Mata from a thousand years of foreign domination. After the ceremony, Nehru and other Congress leaders addressed a mass meeting on the river bank. As the meeting ended, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai whispered to me: “Jawaharlal has performed the last rites not only of Gandhi but of Gandhiism as well. Now that the master has gone, there will be no one to discipline the crowd. The High Command is dead.”
Chapter j
MEETING CHALLENGES
(a) RUTHLESS ACTION
Gandhi’s death wrought a miracle. The country reacted to the foul deed with the determination to preserve the patrimony he left. The people responded as one to the appeals for unity broadcast by Nehru and Patel in the face of the great calamity that hit the nation with cyclonic force. The overwhelming grief expressed throughout the world and the tributes the Pakistani leaders paid Gandhi turned the tragedy into a triumphant assertion of his conviction that all Indians, be they Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs or Christians, were brothers and must live in peace so that the country which had mothered them might grow in greatness.
At one stage, there was fear of fresh outbreaks of violence and Mountbatten ordered the guard of Viceregal House to patrol the city. The Governor-General considered this necessary in view of a strong rumour that those who had assassinated Gandhi were not alone. They were suspected of being implicated in the alleged plot of some rulers of the Jat States surrounding Delhi to overrun the capital and bring off a political coup. Gandhi had said: “If Delhi is lost, India is lost.” He was, no doubt, referring to the fight against communalism. Now, if Delhi was captured by troops from the neighbouring states, this could be the signal for a general uprising stirred up by the princely houses. But, happily, nothing happened.
Gandhi’s martyrdom brought Nehru and Patel together. Two days after Bapu’s death, Patel himself told me that Nehru and he had instinctively felt that they must come together in the face of the
crisis. “We owed it to the country,” he added. And, true enough, they were soon pulling the governmental cart again like two oxen under one yoke, as Gandhi had envisaged and wished for even minutes before his assassination. Both directed their renewed attention to the problem of protecting the hard-won freedom from external and internal threats. Nehru took overall charge of defence matters because of Pakistan’s attack on Kashmir. Patel got down to ensuring internal stability through the liquidation of the forces of disruption and the integration of the Princely States.
Patel launched a powerful attack on the disruptionists, both of the Left and the Right. He ruthlessly crushed the Communist revolt in Telengana in Hyderabad State with the help of hand-picked officials. He ordered the police to shoot at sight and kill as many rebels as was necessary to break the back of the uprising. As a result of the directive, over a thousand persons were shot dead and the Communist extremists were so demoralised that for the next two decades they eschewed armed action and took to constitutional means. Patel, equally, dealt a severe blow to the militantly Hindu R.S.S. Hundreds of its workers were thrown into prisons with the result that the R.S.S. leaders reverted to their programme of social regeneration, putting their political ambitions into cold storage.
The Sikh extremists raised the most delicate issue. Conveniently forgetting Master Tara Singh’s pledge to Nehru, they started talking in terms of a Sikh state and, if that was not possible, a Sikh-majority State where they could establish their separate identity and function as a religio-political entity by making Punjabi in Gurmukhi script its official language. Tara Singh and his brains trust in the Akali Dal decided to try conclusions with Patel first. They demanded separate representation for the Sikhs in the Central Services on the basis of their population. Sardar readily agreed, but meaningfully added that the population formula would also apply to the Army. Since the Sikhs constituted a large proportion in the Army, Tara Singh saw through the implication and dropped the request.
Later, Tara Singh decided to organise a demonstration in Delhi in a bid to project the Akalis as a major political force. He called upon a hundred thousand of his followers to swarm into the capital for a march demanding Punjabi Suba, a Sikh state. But Patel was not to be awed. He got Tara Singh arrested before he could reach Delhi, held up the lorries and trains bringing in his followers and broke up the various camps that were being organised to receive and feed the demonstrators. At this point, Tara Singh and his aides realised that they could not intimidate or blackmail the Iron Man
and decided to suspend the fight and take their chance after Patel left the scene.
Patel told me that he had been helped by three factors in dealing with Tara Singh’s challenge. Intelligence kept him posted on the divisions in the Akali camp and this helped him to play one against the other with the support of Defence Minister Baldev Singh, a financier of Tara Singh. Secondly, his Regional Commissioner, M. R. Bhide, a Punjab civilian, gave him a detailed assessment of the main personalities among the former Sikh rulers and the Sikh politicians and their manoeuvres. He also drew attention to the influence that the Communists were building up in the Punjab countryside with a view to repeating Telenlgana. Thirdly, Patel had brought to Delhi from Ajmer as Chief Commissioner a Civil Servant, Shankar Prasad, who was very experienced in handling problems of law and order and troublesome politicians.
As Home Minister, Patel pushed through Parliament in one day all three readings of the Preventive Detention Bill designed to safeguard internal security. When the Nehru-Liaquat Pact regarding safeguards for the religious minorities was negotiated in 1950, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee and K. C. Neogy, both Bengalis, resigned from the Nehru Cabinet in protest at what they considered a betrayal of the eleven million Hindus in East Pakistan. The Government was in a state of crisis. Patel was unhappy about the agreement, and he realised that the large majority of Congress and opposition M.P.s shared his feelings. Nonetheless, he stood by the Prime Minister and his speech in Parliament fully supporting Nehru helped the Government to weather the storm. Patel was so conscious of his responsibilities that when Parliament was in session he used to ring up the Chief Whip of the Congress Parliamentary Party every night before retiring to inquire about both the business in the Lok Sabha the following day and the prospects for lobbying.
(b) MERGER OF STATES
The integration of the Princely States with the rest of India was not planned in advance. Patel told me it was the result of fortuitous circumstances which were helped by the wave of nationalism in which the Princes were caught up. To this, however, may be added the prestige and authority of Patel himself. The merger of the smaller States began in Orissa by accident and the process spread from there to other areas.
Narrating the story of the first merger, Patel told me that the
idea had originated with Hare Krushna Mahatab, who formed in 1938 the State Praja Mandal, an organisation of the people living in the States of Orissa. This Orissa Congress leader proposed that the small States be merged with the provinces under British administration, and the States Peoples Conference appointed a committee with Mahatab as its chairman to study the proposal in relation to Orissa. The committee recommended that the States be brought under the provincial Government as reforms in them, while they maintained their separateness, would have no value. Mahatab took up this matter with Cripps when he came to India in 1942. The Political Department agreed that this was the only feasible solution of the problem but did nothing about it. When India became independent, the British departed leaving the States as they were. Mahatab convinced Gandhi and Patel of the soundness of his scheme, and he suggested to Patel in November 1947 that he should set the process in motion in Orissa.
V. P. Menon, on the contrary, proposed to Patel that a system of joint control, leaving some administrative powers in the hands of the Princes, should be evolved. Mahatab objected, saying this would only cause confusion and insisted that complete merger was the only solution. Patel agreed, and when the two leaders met in Cuttack and Bhubaneshwar the entire memorandum relating to the merger of States was redrafted with the help of the Chief Secretary of the provincial Government and, what is more, reprinted overnight.
The next day, when the rulers of Orissa conferred with Patel and Mahatab, they referred to the earlier memorandum of association which had been sent to them. Patel and Mahatab disowned knowledge of it. Patel then told the rulers: “If you do not accept our proposal, I do not take responsibility for law and order in your State. You take care of yourself.” As the Praja Mandal leaders were ready to overthrow the Princes and effect merger by force, the rulers accepted the new scheme. Thus the first merger of States went through without a single incident in Orissa, to be followed in Chattisgarh, where the States were merged with the Central Provinces.
The Congress leaders were prepared to consider eighteen States viable and permit them to continue as autonomous units under the Instrument of Accession. These included Alwar and Bharatpur, but Gandhi’s assassination set in motion the second wave of integration. The pistol which fired the fatal shot was alleged to have belonged to the Maharaja of Alwar’s collection of firearms, and volunteers belonging to the R.S.S. were said to have been trained in the use of arms in the State. Dr. N. B. Khare was then the Chief Minister of
Alwar and the suspicion that the ruler had a hand in the shooting grew stronger because Khare was known to bear Gandhi a grudge for getting him ousted from the chief ministership of the Central Provinces.
K. B. Lall, Special Administrator for Alwar, meanwhile, sent to the Home Ministry a report on the basis of available evidence which showed that the rulers of Alwar and Bharatpur were implicated in a plot to topple the Government. Patel decided that the two Princes should be tried by their peers and five of the leading rulers were summoned to Delhi.
As soon as the Princes arrived, they anxiously sought the reason for the call. They were told that the summons was in connection with Gandhi’s assassination. This disclosure caused them much alarm. They were taken to Mountbatten, who told them to their great relief that they were personally not suspected of complicity. They had been called to judge the role of Alwar and Bharatpur. The evidence collected was placed before them and they readily agreed that the two Princes should be punished by depriving them of their powers. Matsya Union thus came to be formed and states considered viable were merged for the first time. Then followed other mergers.
The Maharajas of Alwar and Bharatpur might not have been stripped of their powers and Matsya Union created but for the allegations that they had taken part in the massacre and forcible eviction from their lands of Meos, Muslim peasants. This greatly angered Nehru and he was not willing to show any sympathy to the two rulers. In fact, Patel told me that had Nehru not reacted angrily, Mountbatten might not have been as helpful as he was in depriving the Princes of their powers and in effecting the changes.
That, however, was not the end of the story. Later the rulers in the Matsya Union planned a secret meeting to consider joint action to regain their powers. As soon as Lall received the news, he rang up the Maharaja of Dholpur, at whose headquarters the meeting was to be held, and said he would like to join him in a hunt for big game. The Prince invited him over at once and Lall reached Dholpur on the day fixed for the secret meeting. His presence acted as a damper to the princely plotters and rung the curtain on further conspiracy. Incidentally, Congress leaders of the area complained to Delhi that Lall was too fond of the company of the former rulers, with whom he ate and drank frequently. They did not realise, however, that by approaching the Princes at the social level Lall had not only got them to do the things the Government wanted but scotched a major plot.
The Sardar also used the proverbial carrot to persuade the rulers of the larger States to sign instruments transferring their powers to the Union Government. He offered them the prospect of becoming a Raj Pramukh, an office similar to that of Governor and the move worked. Rulers like Jamnagar and Patiala, for instance, saw in this an opportunity to become leaders among the Princes and to extend their authority over larger territories than their own hereditary princedoms. The rulers saw from the fate of Alwar and Bharatpur that the new Government would intervene effectively when law and order were threatened and would encourage the growth of democracy. At the same time, they realised that their best bet for retaining personal status, palaces and privy purses lay in giving up their powers as rulers.
(c) HYDERABAD AND JINNAH
Hyderabad provided Patel his biggest challenge. Mountbatten’s Indian Press Attache told me that the Governor-General wanted to depart from India in a blaze of glory by negotiating a settlement between Delhi and the Nizam. Nehru, too, was keen on a speedy settlement and backed Mountbatten in his effort. But the Nizam proved difficult, encouraged and inspired by Pakistan and his own pro-Pakistani advisers. Mountbatten finally left India on 21st June, 1948, handing over charge to G. R., who earned the distinction of becoming the first Indian Governor-General.
An attempt was made earlier to bring the Nizam to agree to accession through an informal economic blockade. But the stoppage of trade with the state proved ineffective and Patel sent K. M. Munshi to Hyderabad as the representative of the Indian Government to keep Delhi informed about developments in the state. Munshi did his job well but, in the meantime, the failure of the blockade resulted in heavy pressure on Patel to distribute arms to the people of Hyderabad so that they could rise against the Nizam. Significantly, Patel refused to countenance the proposal, throwing light on his method of work. If force was to be used, he ruled, it must be done by the Government and not by indisciplined volunteers.
A few weeks after the departure of Mountbatten New Delhi received a report that the Nizam was trying to buy Goa from Portugal so that his landlocked State would have access to the sea. The Nizam was also said to have loaned a large sum of money (about Rs. 200 million) to Pakistan as part of his effort to win Jinnah’s support. Nehru took counsel with Patel, who advised him
to send troops to garrison Secunderabad Cantonment and take police action against the Nizam if he resisted. Nehru announced this move on 10th September and troops moved into Hyderabad three days later with the command: “March on, protect all, crush resistance.”
The police action in Hyderabad was preceded in New Delhi by days of tenseness and high drama. Twice the zero hour was fixed by Patel, who as Home Minister was to authorise the police action, and on each occasion he was compelled to cancel it under heavy political pressure. The zero hour was then fixed for the third time and Patel was determined to see it through. Once again a hitch developed at the eleventh hour. The Nizam appealed personally to C. R., who conferred with Nehru and they both decided to call off action again. Patel was informed and the question of drafting a suitable reply to the Nizam arose.
The Defence Secretary, H. M. Patel, and V. P. Menon were summoned and they exhausted three hours in consultation and formulating a reply. When the reply was finally ready, Patel coolly announced that the Army had already moved into Hyderabad and nothing could be done to halt it. Defence Minister Baldev Singh and Patel were of one mind and had resolved to bring the Nizam to his senses and not yield to any further counsel of weakness. I kept a tab on this midnight drama from my house through telephonic contact with Patel’s residence. Not unexpectedly, Nehru and C. R. were at once agitated and worried about whether it would provoke retaliation by Pakistan. But, within twenty-four hours, the action was successfully underway and there were smiles all round.
A relevant aside was Pakistan’s unexpected success in raising the Hyderabad issue in the Security Council. Eight members of the Council voted for considering the matter, while the Soviet Union, the Ukraine and China remained neutral. The Nizam surrendered on 17th September. Pakistan and its supporters looked small when India’s representative at Lake Success did not appear at the next meeting of the Council and Pakistan’s complaint was automatically dropped.
Nehru declared on 19th September that the future of the state would be decided according to the wishes of its people. The following day, Jinnah died of cancer that had afflicted him for years, and, in its preoccupation with ensuring stability and continuity after his departure from the political scene, the Pakistani Government decided not to pursue a militant line on Hyderabad.
Hyderabad symbolised the last ofjinnah’s failures in the post-1947 period. Strangely enough, Jinnah, who was so successful a strategist
and tactician when he was fighting for Pakistan, failed to achieve any of the objectives he set himself as head of the new state that he won on “a platter.” Jinnah’s military adventure in Kashmir failed both when he sent in the tribal hordes and subsequently when he unsuccessfully ordered his British Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Gracey, to march troops in. His manoeuvre to get some Princes to form a separate bloc and ally with Pakistan as a counterweight to India too failed to pay off. His attempt to detach Junagadh from India did not succeed. The reason for these failures was not difficult to see. Jinnah was left to his own devices and there was no third party to help him in his efforts to bully Nehru—and India.
(d) ARMY REFASHIONED
General Smith’s gloomy forecast on 14th August that the army would break up within six months rang in my ears. World War I had proved that the Indian soldier was valiant and could fight in any terrain or climate. World War II showed that given proper training the jawan could use modern weapons skilfully and Indian officers could lead their men ably in battle. But partition found India’s army faced with unprecedented problems. The units were divided between the two new dominions and there was a large-scale change of officers and men as a result of the option offered to them to choose between India and Pakistan. The Army required to be given fresh cohesion and refashioned into an efficient fighting force.
This was no small task and Nehru decided to take advantage of the British experience. General Bucher was invited to continue as the Commander-in-Chief and so also the British officers heading the Navy and the Air Force. But the scope of the C.-in-C.’s job underwent a sea change with the dawn of independence. In the British days, the C.-in-C. enjoyed prerogatives and powers next only to the Viceroy as the Empire ultimately depended for its survival on the Army. He resided in the large imposing mansion on Roberts Road (later occupied by Nehru as Prime Minister) a few hundred yards to the south of Viceroy’s House. Now, he was only the head of the Army, taking his orders from Free India’s first Defence Minister, Sardar Baldev Singh.
The Defence Minister, tall and well-built, was an impressive personality. For all the anecdotes fabricated around his person about his knowledge of English idiom, he succeeded remarkably in promoting consolidation of the armed forces. He had sharp intelligence, personal courage and freedom from communal bias. He realised the high stakes involved in giving India a fine army and
Meeting Challenges 287
was firm on matters involving principle. His first task was to establish once and for all the supremacy of the civil power in matters governing the armed forces and, towards this end, he laid down that all appointments to the rank of colonel and above would be approved by the Defence Minister.
The Defence Secretary, H. M. Patel, for his part, made a major contribution to this evolution by ordering the Defence Ministry to maintain its own records of files. Till then, the Army Department merely rubber-stamped every file because the C.-in-G. was also the Army member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council. Today the Defence Ministry is the custodian of all files, symbolising the supremacy of the civil authority.
Pakistan’s attack on Kashmir posed the hastily regrouped Army its biggest test. The Pakistani raiders were on the outskirts of Srinagar by the time India went into action and troops were flown into the Valley. However, our troops not only halted the advance but rolled back the marauders. Baldev Singh as Defence Minister played no small part in the success of the operation by his air dash to the Front, together with Patel. Our forces in the Valley were not only inadequate but ill-equipped. As Baldev Singh later told me, there was not enough ammunition, and our aircraft lacked bombs, were even starved of fuel to keep them airborne. Snap decisions and their prompt implementation turned the tide in our favour.
Following his return from Kashmir, Baldev Singh decided to relieve Bucher of his command. Nehru backed him and turned his face against Bucher’s suggestion that he continue as military adviser to the Government. The choice of successor lay mainly between General K. M. Cariappa and General Rajendrasinhji. Patel favoured the latter, but Cariappa was chosen as the next C.-in-C. in view of the strong views expressed in his favour by Baldev Singh and the Defence Secretariat. Rajendrasinhji, a kinsman of the Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, had his innings when he was chosen as successor to Cariappa.
Cariappa was a stickler for discipline and believed in the British tradition of spit and polish. He forged the Indian Army on the old British style. The transition to the new pattern in regard to the highly important question of the relations between the Defence Secretary and the Army Chief was not easy. However, Cariappa eventually adjusted himself to the new situation.
The warfare in Kashmir proved a blessing in disguise from the national point of view. It not only trained our officers and jawans to plan operations and work in cohesion but also threw up men like
Shrinagesh, Thimayya and Kalwant Singh whose daring and exploits marked them for future leadership. The blood shed by the officers and men in the state did not go in vain. If the Army gave India Kashmir, Kashmir gave India its Army.
Chapter 6
TALKS WITH NEHRU
(a) MORAL LEADER OF MANKIND
Once stability and security had been assured by the strong-arm methods of Patel, Nehru concentrated attention on projecting his ideology at home and abroad. Internally, he declared war on feudalism, capitalism and ignorance to give economic and social content to freedom and to take India into the modern age. He had earlier named the communalists as the main enemy. He now turned on the bania, the wealthy and the capitalist as the villains of the piece. Externally, with his unrivalled zeal, he became the torch-bearer for the freedom of Asians and Africans from colonial bondage and for peaceful coexistence between the democratic and Communist worlds.
Patel, on the other hand, got down to building up a new Indian Administrative Service and to integrating and raising to the level of administration in the provinces of erstwhile British India the administrative structure in the Princely States, which had first formed separate Unions and were later absorbed in the various states under the new Constitution. He also set about creating confidence in the regime so that when the first general election enfranchising all the 170 million adults was held, the operation, the biggest among democracies, might be carried out peacefully and in freedom. He set up the Election Commission having the same independent status as the Supreme Court and the Auditor General.
Of course, an administrative machinery was already in existence when India became independent. But the steel frame had been split into two with the creation of Pakistan and, moreover, a yawning gap was left with the wholesale departure of the British officials. New foundations had to be laid and a whole new cadre of Indians had to be entrusted with functions few of them had performed
Sardar Patel (right) with the Nizam of Hyderabad after the integration
of his state
I )unpi I y
Hi/If l«"il Htsi/r
ABOVE The author meets President Johnson at the White House on his
world tour in 1967
below Nehiu takes his daughter Indira Gandhi, then politically unknown, to receive the Freedom of the City of London in July 1956
before and the administrative services had to be oriented to the role of working for the nation and not for a foreign ruler. Patel’s instinctive judgment of men helped and he soon won the respect and confidence of the steel frame and the other services. Nationalist feeling was particularly strong against the Indian members of the ICS But Patel silenced the critics and saved the situation by declaring:
They served the British well; they will now serve the nationalist Government even better.”
A tangible asset India enjoyed was the goodwill of almost all nations and their admiration at the orderly manner she had gained freedom. India became the beacon for other nations struggling to break the shackles of colonialism. Among the first tasks Nehru had to perform was to select Ambassadors to the U.S. and the Soviet Union and a High Commissioner for Britain. Attlee made it known that he would be happy to have John Matthai or Radhakrishnan accredited to the Court of St. James’s. He did this, Patel told me, with the aim of hinting broadly to Nehru that Krishna Menon would not fill the bill. But Menon had already succeeded in working Nehru round to getting Mountbatten to propose him for the post.
While India’s diplomatic representatives made little impact on the three centres of power, Washington, Moscow and London, Nehru captured the world stage and assumed the moral leadership of mankind as Gandhi’s heir. The accent in which he spoke made the war-weary nations listen to him as they would to a crusader. Nehru made world headlines when he sponsored a conference of eighteen Asian nations in Delhi in January 1949 and fixed a deadline for Indonesia to be freed from Dutch rule. The U.N. backed him, and Indonesia became independent on 1st January, 1950. Nehru also inspired the conference of five member-nations of the Commonwealth to discuss the disturbed state of Burma and back its democratically-elected Government headed by U Nu.
Nehru was clearly on top, and strode the national and world stage like a colossus. His success showed up pointedly when I visited Karachi as a member of the Inter-Dominion Press Consultative Committee in March 1949. That was the time when Delhi was hoping for better relations with Pakistan and was trying to bring about a customs union. I remember Khwaja Nazimuddin, the Governor-General of Pakistan, telling me on the occasion that the people of the two countries had identical characteristics—the same strength and the same weaknesses. But India, he added, had “one plus—Nehru.” Because they had no charismatic personality to look up to, the Pakistanis had to whip up Islam to provide a cementing force.
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By the middle of 1949, Indo-Pakistani relations, however, deteriorated. India was prepared for an immediate plebiscite in Kashmir but Liaquat Ali, knowing it would go against Pakistan, shirked the challenge. Karachi then sent up a balloon suggesting that the state’s partition on the ceasefire line could solve the problem. This time, Delhi rejected the feeler, confident that it would win the whole state in a free vote. Indo—Pakistani relations were further strained by Karachi’s refusal to devalue her rupee when Delhi devalued hers at the same time as the sterling. The proposal for a customs union went by the board. Instead, India and Pakistan found themselves pitted against each other in an economic war.
Pakistan’s position on Kashmir hardened when Liaquat Ali, according to what Nehru told me, successfully blackmailed Washington and London into making a political deal with Karachi by accepting an invitation to visit Moscow. Under the bargain, Pakistan agreed to join the Anglo-American military bloc in return for support on Kashmir. Accordingly, reviewing the second year of independence on 15th August, 1949, I wrote in the Hindustan Times : “Each party will continue to hold what it has in Kashmir.” I further wrote that the new Commonwealth formula would not help since India and Pakistan were enmeshed in an intense cold war. Pakistan’s view was made brutally clear by Khaliq-uz-Zaman when, addressing an Islamic Economic Conference in Karachi on 10th December he plumped for an Islamic bloc in the Middle East as a counterpoise.
(b) NATIONAL LANGUAGE
I had four meaningful off-the-record interviews with Nehru in 1949. They aimed at ascertaining his views on certain basic issues which I felt had a bearing on the evolution of democracy in India and India’s place in the world.
I first took up the question of a national language, on which Tilak and Gandhi had laid much emphasis as the most unifying factor. I told him I was present at a meeting addressed by Gandhi at Birla House when he expressed his views on decontrol of food, sugar and clothing. Gandhi spoke in Hindustani, and when some officers said that they were unable to follow, he replied sharply: “Now we are independent, I shall not speak in English. You have to understand rashtrabhasha (the language of the country) if you wish to serve the people.”
I also recalled an incident when Gandhi addressed a conference of Food Ministers in Hindi. At the end of the meeting, the Minister
from Madras requested Gandhi to say a few words in English as he had not been able to understand the Hindi speech. Gandhi angrily told the Minister: “In that case, you had better resign.” The Minister apologised with folded hands and promised to learn Hindi in six months.
Nehru replied: “Of course, Hindi will be the national language. It cannot be English. How many people understand English? In any case, we cannot communicate with the masses in English. You know, we gave Sarup (Mrs. Pandit) her credentials in Hindi for presentation in Moscow. That is good enough to indicate our stand and our determination. But I am not a fanatic. It must be done gradually and with due regard to regional sentiment.”
I mentioned that parents all over the country were deeply interested in this issue and the fact that he preferred those educated in Britain or in Anglo-Indian schools in India in making diplomatic appointments had created the impression that the future rested with pupils of public schools, convents and similar institutions. When independence came these institutions were thinking of selling off their property and closing down. But this had been followed by a sudden spurt in their enrolment and they had long lists of applicants for admission. It was only fair that parents should know the future as he envisaged it. Nehru said he must send abroad persons who could speak English “decently” and were familiar with foreign ways. Japan, he said, took special care to train and orient its diplomats.
Since I understood that Nehru favoured Hindi as the national language, I suggested that he would make a nationwide impact if he merely laid down the rule that any Indian who talked to him at his residence must speak Hindi-Hindustani. Otherwise, he should see him in his office. That would be a signal to all who wished to see him at home to learn Hindi. Nehru laughed at the idea that he should talk “to my own people through interpreters” and added: “I can have no worthwhile dialogue with foreign visitors or diplomats who do not talk English and I have to have an interpreter.” He continued: “Anyway, we are making provision in the Constitution. Everyone will have to fall in line with that.”
I inquired whether the Congress leaders had given thought to the social aspect of living and whether they proposed to lay down a yardstick for the Ministers in regard to their way of life and dress. Gandhi had suggested that Nehru should stay in the quarters meant for members of Parliament, but he had shifted to the stately mansion formerly occupied by the British Commander-in-Chief. His Ministers had followed suit by occupying the large houses meant for Executive Councillors. Again, several Ministers who used
292 The Nehru Era
to squat on the floor and eat off brass plates or plantain leaves in their homes were now trying to ape Western ways. They contended that Nehru considered only Westernised people modern. I asked whether he would indicate his ideas about the pattern of living the Ministers should adopt. He replied that these things would get sorted out as time went by.
In my talks with Civil Servants I found they looked down on the average politician as a crude and semi-civilised person. The politician, on his part, considered the civilians Brown Sahibs who wallowed in drink and vice and had no sense of patriotism. Since democracy was nurtured on the cross-fertilisation of ideas between politicians and Civil Servants, it was important that these two groups should develop respect for each other and meet socially. Nehru, for his part, felt that every Minister and Civil Servant would live and learn.
Salaries and perquisites, I said, must be so fixed that politicians in office and Civil Servants did not feel the temptation to be corrupt. The British had observed certain principles in governing their Empire. They gave a sense of security to their officers and a salary and perquisites which would not tempt them to depend on the richer elements in society to meet their needs. But already some politicians were getting attached to business houses which were providing them with various perquisites, some secretly and some indiscreetly.
I next inquired if he had taken note of the growing trend towards parochialism and nepotism. Ministers, I said, were choosing their staff, whether personal or ministerial, largely from among those who belonged to their region and spoke the same language. Some went so far as to give preference to their caste and community. This type of nepotism could be checked only if a new norm was laid down and practised universally. He had the power and the emotional appeal to apply correctives and take the people into the modern age. Nehru remained silent and I sensed that he had set a limit on his power to take the people with him.
What about a national opposition for the healthy growth of democracy ? At the back of my mind was the series of talks I had had on the subject with Kidwai, who was trying to force Nehru to break away from the “reactionaries,” as he described Patel and his followers, and form a Socialist Party. “You cannot create an opposition artificially,” Nehru replied. Kidwai, I said, was confident that if he formed a new party they would win a majority in the first general election and implement a Socialist programme without inhibitions.
Nehru replied that Kidwai had a lot of “hare-brained” schemes and forgot that the overall need was to consolidate freedom. They
Talks with Nehru 2 gg
could not overnight create a political machine which reached down to the village. Elections could not be won by an appeal to emotion m the countryside. A mass organisation which had contact with the people was needed to get votes. Only the Congress, with its revolutionary past, had such a base and men dedicated to its creed and programme. The differences between the two groups were not intelligible to the masses. It would be disastrous to break up the Congress just to create an opposition. He thought that as people developed their political awareness and economic and social problems showed a clear dividing line, an organised opposition would grow. So far as he could see, that was not to be expected for at least a decade.
(c) ECONOMIC POLICY
What about Nehru’s outlook on economic matters? He agreed that the production of food and other essentials must be increased to fight inflation and put the economy on a sound footing. He had planned a food drive and saw no reason why the country should not become self-sufficient in food in two years. But he was more concerned with building a broad industrial base even if it meant austerity in regard to consumer goods.
Gandhi, I said, wanted an integrated economy in which the villager and the townsman shared equally. He had hoped to do this through small-scale and cottage industries as he was thinking in terms of work for the unemployed and underemployed. Would he not first build agriculture and light industries and then build an industrial base out of the national savings they generated? Nehru accepted the need to encourage cottage industries, but side by side the nation must undertake to build heavy industry. In the final analysis a country’s military strength depended on its industrial sinews. He wanted to take advantage of the period of peace, which he expected would last ten to fifteen years, to create a strong industrial base.
Who were the enemies he had in mind ? It was obvious, he replied, that Pakistan was on the warpath. Whether it would attempt another military conclusion or not, India must be prepared to meet the threat. There was no other external danger. China would never think of invading India. At any rate, it would be a couple of decades before it would settle down to an ordered life.
Would nationalisation of the means of production achieve what he had in mind? Nehru was emphatic that the Government could not undertake such a colossal task. That would be a move towards an
authoritarian state. He was thinking of the parallel growth of the public sector and the private sector, with the Government acting as the watchdog of the national interests and safeguarding them through laws, regulations and administrative acts.
Did he consider a bureaucrat a better instrument than a capitalist to bring about the social changes he had in mind? No, they were equally bad. Only, the bureaucrat could be held answerable, the capitalist was elusive. Anyway, he added, it was for the Planning Commission to work these matters out and for the Labour Minister to undertake practical schemes. He could only give broad policy directives and indicate the goals he had in mind.
But I said his refrain about sarmai dari (capitalism) being the enemy of the people was not producing the proper climate for cooperation between management and labour. The real enemy was poverty, lethargy, corruption and incompetence. Capitalism and communalism merely exploited the people’s backwardness. Nehru retorted: “Mine is an all-out war on all evils. I count on the people rising against them and cleaning up this centuries-old muck.”
(d) FOREIGN POLICY
Nehru considered India’s foreign policy his main concern. The country needed peace to build up its economic strength and a new social order. This could happen only if another world war was avoided and imperialism and colonialism liquidated. Having achieved her freedom, India must spearhead the movement for the freedom of all the subject peoples of Asia and Africa. India’s voice must be firm and loud on their behalf. He had returned disappointed from his visit to the U.S. in 1949. The Americans were so scared of Communism that they were underwriting colonialism and reactionary regimes. He sensed the arrogance of power in Washington and the arrogance of money in New York.
Nehru spoke at length and it was clear the key note of his foreign policy was that, China and Russia being India’s neighbours, India should be friendly with both. Moreover, Indian military power should never be permitted to serve the political ends of the Western powers in Asia or anywhere else in the world. But even as he spoke of friendship with the northern neighbour, big things were happening in China. K. M. Panikkar, India’s Ambassador to the Chiang Kai-shek regime in Nanking, had reported victories for the Communists on the battlefield and advised Nehru to recognise them as the rulers of China.
In September, the Communist radio asserted that Tibet was a
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part of China and that “the British and American imperialists and their running dog Nehru are now plotting a coup in Lhasa for the annexation of Tibet.” I asked Nehru for his comments and he told me this was the Communist Chinese reaction to his permitting a Kuommtang mission to pass through India. He said he would not quarrel with China over Tibet. He would not take over Curzon’s role and establish Indian influence in Lhasa. Patel and Prasad, to whom I spoke later, reacted differently. They felt Tibet was India’s northernmost outpost in the Himalayas and that the Communist radio comment was a danger signal which New Delhi must heed.
Chapter j
TO THE NEW WORLD
(a) NEHRU A “COMMIE”
How did the world outside look at Independent India? I got my first opportunity of studying this in the summer of 1950, when I attended the seventh Imperial Press Conference in Ottawa as one of the six Indian representatives. India had, at long last, arrived and one was thrilled to discover that Indian opinion now received due consideration. C. R. Srinivasan, Publisher-Editor of Swadesamitran of Madras, and I, for instance, made it known soon after our arrival that we wanted the organisation to be renamed the Commonwealth Press Conference. Some British delegates, led by the Editor of Beaverbrook’s Daily Express, strongly plumped for the Churchillian phrase “Commonwealth and Empire.” But our proposal was carried unanimously (without any lobbying on our part) when the leader of the Australian delegation, Sir Keith Murdoch, powerfully supported us.
I recall an interesting aside at the outset—my meeting with Altaf Hussain, Editor of Dawn, who was the sole delegate from Pakistan. Altaf had played no small part in spearheading the demand for Pakistan on the basis of the two-nation theory, but he said to me in the lounge of the Hotel Chateau Fontenac in Quebec: “Here we realise we are one and we flock together. We have little in common with the other delegates.” However, we were of them also because we stood for the freedom of the Press and freedom of information.
2g6 The Nehru Era
The comradeship created at the conference was an invaluable asset to me later. To mention a few, the friendships I formed with Colonel (now Lord) Astor, Roy (now Lord) Thomson, R. P. T. Gibson of the Westminster Press Provincial Newspapers, John Grigg (formerly Lord Altrincham) have grown stronger with the passage of time.
Indeed, we were able to persuade the Conference to arrange for training journalists from our countries and for exchanges of staff to promote better understanding among the members of the Commonwealth. The need for this was brought home to me when a Canadian journalist, who was also a member of the national Senate, asked whether I was a Brahmin or a Hindu and the charming wife of a newsprint magnate wanted to know whether New Delhi was the capital of Pakistan. But while there was ignorance about India among average Canadians, my talks with St. Laurent, the Prime Minister, and his predecessor Mackenzie King were heartwarming. They seemed to be happy at Nehru standing up to the U.S. Both of them assured me they were more in tune with New Delhi than with London on anti-colonial issues.
Canada was otherwise preoccupied with internal matters and appeared at that time a question mark. I said in the series of articles I wrote entitled Report on America : “The British and the French elements in Canada stand apart nursing age-old linguistic, religious and cultural differences (even more deeprooted than the so-called Hindu-Muslim differences in our country), and in that respect are even more reactionary than people in England and France.” The Mayor of Toronto called his city “the centre of Britain” at a banquet in honour of the delegates. A top banker said to me: “We hold the purse strings. The French will starve without us.”
I mentioned in my articles that the demand of the Frenchspeaking Canadians for a new national flag (conceded in 1966) and a new national anthem was born out of racial conflict. I ended my piece on Canada by stating that Canada’s geographical boundaries and politics could not be said to be stable, while “some (mostly French Canadians) think that partitioning of the country into two separate republics within the Commonwealth or merger with the U.S.A. is her ultimate destiny.” I presume Canada is still a question mark.
The impact of the U.S. was even more dream-shattering. The State Department official who gave me a brief orientation talk said: “The U.S.A. is like a child just emerging into manhood and not knowing how to use its new strength.” A journalist accredited to the White House told me at a cocktail party: “No one knows what the country’s policy is on a given subject. I spoke one day to five
officers of the State Department and each gave a different answer on the same question.’ American opinion was, however, almost unanimous on two matters. They told me “Nehru is a Commie,” and that domestically their main headache was where to park their cars.
They also reacted emotionally rather than rationally to events. I found, for example, that a leading journal which had castigated Nehru s pro-Marxist politics” one morning, lauded him frenziedly the next when the news came through that the Indian Cabinet had endorsed the U.S. Security Council resolution on Korea. A leading newspaperman wrote to me at the time: “Nehru can have ten Damodar Valley projects on a platter.”
Vijayalakshmi Pandit, who was our first Ambassador in Washington to sell India to the U.S., had for lunch at her residence Walter Lippman, Herbert Elliston, Marquis Childs and James Reston. She left us together after we had eaten to discuss relations between India and the U.S., and our talk centred largely on the American commitment in Indo-China. Had their Government acted rightly? Why hadn’t India recognised the Bao Dai regime? Did not India see the danger inherent in her attitude of neutrality ? Communism was on the march in Asia and unless it was checked in Indo-China, would not India be its next victim? (Curiously I was confronted seventeen years later with similar posers when I met President Johnson and his principal aides in June 1967.)
I wrote in my travel diary in 1950 that the developments in Indo-China would have taken a different shape if Nehru had been allowed to handle it the way he did Indonesia. Had that been done, I wrote, “Ho Chi-minh would have reacted differently. He is a nationalist. The whole of South-East Asia is surging with the spirit of nationalism.” The various countries in the region “would hate nothing more than Chinese suzerainty,” but if they were driven into the Communist camp they would have no alternative but to accept Chinese hegemony under Communist colours. I added that communism could not be contained by military or economic aid “rendered through colonial powers or directly to puppets.” Lippman had remarked: “The British have led us into this (Indo-China) business. They told us Bao Dai is the man to back.”
I met another group of writers and commentators at a luncheon given by the Editor of the Washington Post. They included Ferdinand Kuhn, Andre Visson of Reader's Digest, Stewart Alsop, Eric Stevareid of Columbia Broadcasting System, James Reston, Edward Weintal of Newsweek and George McGhee, Assistant Secretary of State for South-East Asian Affairs. Indo-China figured again in the talk, and
also Kashmir on which one sensed blind prejudice. It was apparent that on the Kashmir issue the Americans had accepted the British view that because the state had a Muslim majority it should go to Pakistan. In general, the attitude of the average American publicist and politician was that “those who are not with us are against us.”
Nehru had returned disappointed from his visit to the U.S., as he told me. How did the U.S., for its part, take him? Nehru, I learnt, had failed to hit off with both White House and Wall Street. His ideas and outlook did not click with theirs. When Nehru was entertained to lunch in New York and was told that the guests represented so many billions of dollars, he took it as a crude attempt to overawe him—and not as a compliment, as intended by the host. The American attitude at the time was best reflected by President Truman when I was introduced to him after his weekly Press Conference. When I suggested he should visit India, he smilingly replied: “Are you sure Nehru would welcome it?”
A luncheon with some Wall Street tycoons in the company of the Indian Consul-General in New York a few days after was a revealing experience. I recalled how a Vice-President and treasurer of Westinghouse had said in a speech at the India-America conference in Delhi in 1949 that “for business, tomorrow rested with Asia.” But, judging by the questions fired at me at the lunch, I could see that foreign bankers and businessmen operating in India had created in my fellow-guests the feeling that “caution rather than enterprise” should be their watchword in India.
I visited the Negro ghettoes of New York and Chicago as well as of other cities, and came to the conclusion that these underdogs of the affluent society were exploited alike by well-to-do blacks and whites. A visit to Warner Studios in Hollywood, showed how Pakistan was scoring over India in propaganda. Warner’s manager asked why India was not putting out material of the type Pakistan was supplying the studios. “We are a nation of salesmen,” he added. I found throughout the tour that our embassies were selling Nehru, not India, unlike our neighbour’s which were selling Pakistan.
(b) A WINDOW ON THE WORLD
I met Nehru and the Secretary General of the External Affairs Ministry after my tour of the New World to give them my impressions and get to know their attitude towards Russia and China. I had told Americans that they were wrong in describing Nehru as a “Commie” and that the Russians wanted the support of India as a counterweight to China. I had learned in New Delhi earlier that
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soon after the successful climax of the Chinese revolution, a Russian feeler was put out through its Mission in Peking for a treaty of nonaggression and friendship between New Delhi and Moscow. Panikkar who was Ambassador in Peking, ignored the suggestion. When it was repeated at the ambassadorial level, he wrote to Nehru that the suggestion was not to be taken seriously. Nehru therefore did not pursue the matter as he felt that India and China had coexisted peacefully for centuries and there had never been a clash of arms. He did wonder if this happy state would continue after Mao took over in Peking. Nevertheless, he decided that India should cultivate the goodwill of the Chinese Communist leaders and seek peaceful relations.
Nehru realised that India had a long border with China and indirectly sought a guarantee of its frontier. Consequently, whenever there were diplomatic parleys in those early days between Indian and Chinese officials, the Indians repeatedly suggested that Peking should, in the interest of its international image, create confidence among its smaller neighbours by declaring categorically that it accepted the existing international boundaries. This was an indirect attempt to get confirmation of India’s border with China. Nehru told me he was against taking up the issue directly with Peking as that might give the Chinese an impression that New Delhi had doubts about the exact location of the border. Peking’s reply to Indian hints was invariably that no public declaration of the kind suggested was necessary, and in any event the question of revising maps could wait.
I returned from the New World convinced that India must establish direct communication with the outside world to fulfil the role India through Nehru was assuming in foreign affairs. A few months later, I had two meetings with the Prime Minister and suggested the need for an Indian news agency with a worldwide system of gathering and disseminating news. I told him how Reuter men, like trade, had followed the Union Jack to all parts of the globe. As a former Reuter man myself, I also explained how this agency gave the British Government a big pull in international affairs by the way it functioned.
I was convinced that India was in a position to organise a world news agency. We had a larger number of embassies and legations abroad than any other non-European country. Secondly, Nehru was taking a leading part in international affairs, and whatever he said in India or the stand his representatives took at the U.N. commanded worldwide attention. All that was required was to station an Indian newsman in every country where we had a diplomatic mission.
These men would be taken into confidence by our diplomats so as to enable them to be the first with the news.
How was this to be done? Nehru asked. I told him it was possible to achieve what I had in mind without much expense or dislocation of the administration. The journalists his Ministry had recruited as Press Officers could be transferred to the newly-created foreign cadre of the Press Trust of India and assured as attractive terms of service as the Ministry had promised them. The additional expenditure could be met by the Government subscribing to the P.T.I. service on commercial terms and thus compensating it in the manner done by other Governments.
“I am all for it,” said Nehru, and asked me to prepare a note. But I urged him to dictate the note himself as that would give the impression that the scheme had come from him. It would then be treated with the respect it deserved.
A fortnight later he summoned me and said he had not been able to find time to dictate the note and asked me to write it and leave it with him unsigned. India and Nehru, I again emphasised, were riding the crest of a wave of worldwide interest and esteem, and a global news service could be built at a modest cost. A decade later, when other nations had gained importance and the world was attuned differently, this opportunity would be lost and the monopoly of the Western news agencies would continue.
Nehru assured me he would take a personal interest in the project. He sent the note to the Ministry, but nothing happened. A decade later, P.T.I. was helped to open offices in a few foreign countries. The amount sanctioned for the purpose was not less than what I had recommended for a worldwide set-up. But what the Government then secured was not a world agency, projecting the image of India and of the coloured world, but the feeding of the Indian Press with the doings of our Embassies abroad.
Chapter 8