by Kuldip Nayar
Mountbatten began with Gandhi who, after hearing the word ‘partition’, did not want to know anything further. Before leaving the room he told Mountbatten that the British should hand over power to Jinnah and leave. What he proposed was that Jinnah be appointed as India’s first prime minister. Nehru and Patel opposed the idea and found it ‘impractical’. Both were now together to win power, even if it came to dividing India.
Mountbatten told me that ‘Whenever he [Gandhi] entered my room I felt an aura of holiness around him’. Azad’s grievance was that Gandhi did not speak out against Partition when he should have. He blamed Patel for ensuring the consolidation of Hindus in one country.
In his own mind, Mountbatten was quite clear: a united India, if possible, or Partition, if necessary. He preferred, as he told me, to have a central authority responsible for the subjects of defence, external affairs, communications, and possibly food. Before long, however, Mountbatten realized that the Congress party did not favour a solution with even a hint of separation. On the other hand, Jinnah did not want to accept any ties, however loose, with even a hint of a Centre. It was a complex scenario.
Mountbatten concentrated on Nehru, by now declared by Gandhi as his successor and accepted as such by Patel. Mountbatten promised both of them the partition of Punjab and West Bengal. They made the CWC resolve on 6 March 1947 that if India were to be divided then Punjab and Bengal would be partitioned, the Muslim-majority area going to Pakistan and the Hindu- and Sikh-majority areas to India. In fact, Patel said in a letter to a friend at the time that if ‘the League insists on Pakistan’, India’s only alternative is to insist on ‘the division of Punjab and Bengal’. Still, the Congress rejected the two-nation theory despite agreeing to the Muslim areas going to West Punjab and East Bengal and the Hindu areas coming to East Punjab and West Bengal. This from the Congress that had fought the Independence movement on the thesis that Hindus and Muslims were one nation; one people fighting against the British.
For Nehru, the Congress resolution was a stratagem rather than an acceptance of the fact of Partition. I wonder why Nehru thought that sooner or later India would have to function as a unified country, even when he accepted Partition. The best explanation I can think of is that he felt that India had to go through some form of partition to forge unity in the long run.
This was clear in a letter Nehru wrote to brigadier, later General K.M. Cariappa, that he was convinced that eventually there would be a strong and united India: ‘We often go through the valley of the shadow before we reach the sunlit mountain tops.’ Nehru was a dreamer and thought of a united India when in reality the country was close to division.
That may be why the property left behind by the Muslims in India was called ‘evacuee property’. It came to be known as ‘enemy property’ only in 1965 after Nehru’s death. India and Pakistan had fought a war that year.
In the partition of Bengal and Punjab, Nehru thought Jinnah would see the logical consequences of his demand for Pakistan. However, for Gandhi, who intentionally did not attend the CWC meeting where the resolution accepting the division was passed, Mountbatten’s suggestion to divide Punjab and Bengal was based on ‘communal grounds and the two-nation theory’.
Therefore, when the demand for an independent, undivided Bengal was raised, Gandhi extended his full support. He saw in it a step towards restoring a part of India’s unity, already crumbling before his eyes. What was cited as ‘Greater Bengal’ or a ‘Sovereign United Bengal’ was the suggestion of Suhrawardy, whose reputation had been soiled by the great Calcutta killing. He said: ‘The two-nation theory should be suitably modified so as to be adaptable to local conditions as the situation demanded.’
Some Hindu leaders, led by Sarat Chandra Bose, also saw Bengal’s ruin in the partition of the state. Jinnah welcomed the proposal of a United Bengal. His comment was: ‘They [the Bengalis] would be much better off by remaining united and independent.’ He even suggested a referendum for the independence of Bengal. He believed that the dalits, till then called the untouchables, would vote for the Muslims. When Mountbatten was sounded, he said he would let the people in the state decide. The then British governor of Bengal also suggested to the viceroy that the state be given the option to become independent.
At this juncture Suhrawardy sought Gandhi’s intervention. The latter’s reply was that the future of Bengal could only be decided by the joint will of the Hindus and Muslims in the state. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, a Hindu Mahasabha leader from Bengal, who joined the central cabinet after Independence, met Gandhi to oppose the whole idea of a sovereign Bengal state. Even then the Congress and the League in Bengal came to a tentative agreement that if and when a Greater Bengal came into being, ‘every act of its Government must carry with it the support of at least two-thirds of the Hindu minority in the executive and the legislature’. This was intended to allay the fears of Hindus who would be in a minority in a United Bengal.
A leader of Bengali Muslims, Abdul Hashim, later said: ‘Whether Hindu or Muslim, a Bengali is a Bengali. Both hated to be ruled by the Pakistanis from over a thousand miles away.’ The statement met with an apt reply: If the concept of a United Bengal made sense, why didn’t the idea that all Indians live together, however different in faiths, made any?
The move of one Bengal, undoubtedly failed at the time but in 1971 a small group, headed by Tajuddin Ahmed, a liberation struggle leader, founded an émigré Bangladesh government where a manifesto was adopted to ensure that the policies of Bangladesh and West Bengal would be enmeshed and based on a progressive economic and social programme. This was a promise for one Bengal of sorts.
Punjab, which was also partitioned, saw no similar move to unite the state. One reason was that the state had neither a Rabindranath Tagore nor a Nazrul Islam to bind the people through poetry, culture, or language. There was nothing like Punjabi nationalism to string together Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. In comparison, Punjab’s great poet, Iqbal, was himself the author of the idea of Partition. The Punjabi language, even though spoken by the people as a whole, was written differently by the three communities: in Arabic (Urdu) script by the Muslims, in Devnagri (Hindi) by the Hindus, and in Gurmukhi (Punjabi) by the Sikhs. The only culture attributed to Punjab was ‘agriculture’, a disparaging remark that still is thrown at Punjabis.
For Mountbatten, there was no question of either a united Bengal or a united Punjab. He was quite clear that if the country was to be divided, splitting the two states was inevitable. He was, however, still hopeful that he might be able to persuade Jinnah to agree to a minimal Centre because partition of Punjab and Bengal would mean ‘a moth-eaten Pakistan’. He was, however, unable to persuade Jinnah to dilute the concept of Pakistan.
The prospect of partitioning both Punjab and Bengal shocked Jinnah and he opposed the suggestion. He argued that they were Punjabis or Bengalis first and anything else afterwards, but the idea of a united India was even more repugnant to him. What he was aiming at was a separate identity and a territory for the Muslims. That being the purpose, even a truncated Bengal and Punjab mattered little. To Nehru and Patel, splitting Bengal and Punjab seemed logical. Jinnah paid Mountbatten back when he refused to accept him as a common governor general.
Two Sikh leaders, Master Tara Singh and Giani Kartar Singh, whom Mountbatten described in his papers as ‘two unkempt junglee-looking old men’, pressed the viceroy to agree to the transfer of population if the state were to be divided. Finally, they persuaded him to agree that in the eventuality of Partition, the Sikhs be given the option of joining either India or Pakistan to enable them to negotiate better terms. The Muslim League offered the Sikhs a Sikkim-like status (unlike other princely states, Sikkim became a tributary of India, in which India controlled its external defence, diplomacy, and communication).
When Jinnah refused to accept any link with India, Mountbatten got Liaquat Ali to agree to ‘an overall Defence Headquarters’, above the separate headquarters of the military in the two countries.
They were to finance the ‘overall Defence Headquarters’ in proportion to their respective populations. Mountbatten wrote in his notes on 19 April: ‘I have the impression that Liaquat Ali Khan intends to help me find a more reasonable solution than this mad Pakistan.’
However, this scheme did not mature. How could it when Jinnah insisted on a communal division of the armed forces, despite Lord Ismay (Jinnah’s personal friend) pleading him to accept a division on numerical lines, keeping regiments intact. A similar exercise had been conducted before the arrival of the Cabinet Mission. That was resurrected when the time for division came. Jinnah did not agree and Liaquat Ali had no standing of his own in the party and therefore the scheme proved to be a non-starter. At one time, Jinnah himself had hinted at the possibility of a defence alliance between Pakistan and India according to the minutes of the viceroy’s meeting on 23 April 1947.
When it was clear that there was no alternative to Pakistan, Mountbatten presented his partition plan to the leaders of political parties. The boundaries of the two countries were to be demarcated by a commission. The princely states were free to join either country. Power would be transferred on the basis of dominion status and either government could withdraw from the Commonwealth if it so desired. The date for the end of British rule was fixed as 15 August, nearly ten months ahead of the time limit set by Attlee in his first statement on the transfer of power.
Mountbatten’s proposal, aptly named ‘Plan Balkan’, was to transfer power to the provincial governments, leaving them to come together to form a central government if and when they chose to do so. The states, released from British authority, would also be free to make such arrangements as they wished. Nehru was furious when Mountbatten showed him the plan because he saw in it many Pakistans. Nehru’s consent was essential if any settlement was to take place.
Mountbatten felt defeated and was summoned to London. What would he tell Attlee? V.P. Menon sought Mountbatten’s permission to try out his plan which he claimed had Patel’s blessings. Mountbatten had seen it and told him to go ahead but Menon found it difficult to meet Nehru before Mountbatten’s departure. However, Edwina Mountbatten managed to arrange an appointment for Menon. Azad had proposed this to Menon. Nehru was not opposed to the Partition plan provided it meant transfer of power to the two countries, not to provincial governments. After the failure of the Cabinet Mission plan, Menon, who had limited educational qualifications, had sketched an alternative and had obtained Patel’s approval. He had sent a copy to the India Office in London. The plan called for the acceptance of Partition, including the division of Punjab, Bengal, and Assam first and the formation of two central governments of India and Pakistan later, each having its own constituent assembly. The transfer of power was to be effected to two central governments.
The London office had with it Menon’s alternate sketch, but it learnt the details only when Mountbatten arrived after obtaining the consent of the Congress and the Sikhs in writing and that of Jinnah orally. Had the British cabinet rejected Menon’s plan, Mountbatten would have resigned, as he told some friends before leaving for London.
Describing his meeting with the British cabinet, Mountbatten told me that he gave them no explanation for the plan. He said he knew that they depended upon him and they ‘had to do’ what he said. They were all exasperated; had no alternative to Partition. Attlee wanted to quit India as soon as possible and therefore agreed to divide the country without any emotion or remorse. Nehru admitted that Partition was ‘evil’ but then he changed his mind. There was no document or letter to explain why he did so. According to Azad, in his book, India Wins Freedom, there was ‘the influence of Lady Mountbatten’ on Nehru. This could well be true, but there was something in the argument that Nehru and Patel, like other top Congress leaders, were by now very tired. They lacked the stamina and will for another round of agitation and imprisonment. They were therefore keen to implement what the Congress had been fighting for decades: building a prosperous India. Nehru wanted at least some of his dreams to be realized during his lifetime. He was already 58 years old.
Whether Lady Mountbatten had any influence over Nehru or not, the general impression was that she had. I recall a post-Independence meeting of chief ministers at the house of Govind Ballabh Pant who was then the home minister, I was his information officer. The topics for discussion included a letter which Lady Mountbatten had written to Nehru to explain why she was late for the Red Cross meeting in Bombay over which he had presided. Her husband had retired by then but Red Cross work had brought her back to India. The reason for the delay was that she had to wait at a crossing while Nehru’s cavalcade passed by. Nehru had sent her complaint to Pant.
As soon as Pant mentioned the name of Lady Mountbatten there was loud laughter in the room, followed by sarcastic comments. There was no doubt in their minds that Nehru was having an affair with her. Nehru had suggested to the home minister that roads should not be closed for the prime minister; instead the traffic should be regulated. B.C. Roy, then the West Bengal chief minister and a prominent Congress leader, said that they did not have to listen to Nehru. They were responsible for the prime minister’s security and would be justified in taking whatever steps they considered necessary. I learnt for the first time that there was a Blue Book setting out the steps for the security of the president and the prime minister. The chief ministers wanted the guidelines in the Blue Book to be stricter.
My interest in finding out about Lady Mountbatten’s influence on Nehru did not slacken with time. I picked up the thread when I was India’s high commissioner in London in 1990. I learnt that Air India flights would carry Nehru’s daily letter, which the high commission dutifully delivered to Lady Mountbatten and daily collected her reply and forwarded it to Nehru. Nehru took officials to task whenever her letter was delayed.
I wished I could see the letters. Was it mere journalistic curiosity? No, it was more than that. Edwina Mountbatten, who, as Azad said, had influenced Nehru to accept the Partition formula must have been an extraordinary woman and a wonderful correspondent; an intelligent human being, honest in her advice.
During my stint in the UK, I met her grandson, Lord Romsey, who headed the Nehru Trust, which Mountbatten had constituted in London to arrange an annual lecture in Nehru’s memory. As high commissioner, I was an ex-officio member of the trust. Lord Romsey and I met many times in that connection. After meeting him a few times, I thought I had developed a sufficient equation to talk to him about his grandmother. He did not seem to mind.
I once broached the subject of Nehru’s letters with him. I said: ‘Nehru wrote beautifully.’ His reply was that his grandmother too wrote beautifully. I told him I would love to see at least one of her letters. I had seen Nehru’s writings but not hers. He said that Rajiv Gandhi and he had exchanged copies of his grandmother’s and Nehru’s letters. There were two sets, one with him and the other with the Gandhi family. I realized then that it would be difficult to obtain access to them.
Nonetheless, I bluntly asked him one day whether his grandmother and Nehru had been in love. First he laughed and then wondered how he could describe their relationship. He paused for a while and said: Theirs was ‘spiritual love’. Then he changed the subject. I let the matter rest there. Lord Romsey subsequently said: ‘They fell in love; a kind of chivalrous love which was understood in the olden days. Nowadays when you talk of love, you think of sex. Theirs was more a soul-to-soul kind of relation. Nehru was an honourable man and he would never have seduced a friend’s wife.’
Back in Delhi I tried to get access to the letters. I went to the Nehru Memorial Library and asked for the correspondence between Jawaharlal Nehru and Lady Mountbatten. The librarian looked surprised. ‘You have to get permission from Mrs Sonia Gandhi,’ he said and closed the topic. I wrote a letter to Sonia Gandhi stating that I was working on a book on the Mountbattens and would like to see Nehru’s papers. She did not reply but Natwar Singh, then the state minister for external affairs, said that I coul
d go to the library and consult the letters. I could hardly believe it. When the librarian placed before me a bundle of papers in a secluded room I thought my efforts had borne fruit. I spent many hours sifting through the pile, but they proved to be Nehru’s letters and notes to Krishna Menon, who got him to change many policies on foreign affairs. My mission was however different. I approached the librarian who said that my permission was for the ‘C’ grade papers. For this I would have to obtain Sonia Gandhi’s specific instructions.
I wrote to her again. Once more Natwar Singh was the channel of communication. He told me the papers could not be made available to me. There was no explanation. All he said was that they were her property and she alone could decide. I think Nehru’s letters are the nation’s property and should be made available to the public because they throw light on matters meaningful to our history. But this does not seem to be the general policy. The government of India has not yet made public the papers relating to the transfer of power by the British to India while the UK has.
Recounting events of the last days before Partition, Azad told me that he was convinced the division of India could have been prevented had Gandhi come out openly against it in the CWC. He repeated the charge that the argument of Hindus consolidating in one country had silenced the committed secularists. Azad said that Gandhi had veered around to accepting ‘Partition’. Azad’s claim was, however, challenged by Abdul Ghaffar Khan. The latter said that ‘Gandhi was the only person who never agreed to partition’. Gandhi just remained silent, Khan said, when he saw that both Nehru and Patel were on same side and keen to immediately occupy the seat of power.
Azad’s contention that Gandhi had become a convert to the idea of Partition was refuted by Mountbatten too, who told me that Gandhi never agreed to it. Historian H.V. Hudson and Mountbatten’s press secretary Alan Campbell-Johnson, whom I met in London, also confirmed that Gandhi did not accept Partition, yet both said that he went along with pain etched on his face because Nehru and Patel, his two lieutenants, had already agreed to it. Even so, the fact remained that the same Gandhi who had declared that Partition would take place over his dead body did not threaten any fast when the British agreed to partition the subcontinent. He did not express his opposition to the formula in public and seemed reconciled to the idea.
