Partition
Page 20
The major issues for resolution, initially run by the Partition Committee of Christie, Chaudhuri Mohammed Ali and H. M. Patel, were taken up from 12 June by a more senior Partition Council, chaired by the viceroy and with Patel, Prasad, Liaquat and Nishtar as full-time members; Nehru and Jinnah joined it on 27 June.29 A key issue was, assuming that the Punjab and Bengal did actually vote for partition, how would the boundaries of the partitioned provinces be decided? Whereas in Bengal the inter-communal divisions were reasonably clear, with the respective communities living in areas that were readily divisible, in the Punjab Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were intermixed, especially in the areas around Lahore, Jullundur, Ferozepore and Amritsar. The matter was further complicated by the important Sikh holy places in western Punjab, and the difficulty of dividing the irrigation systems so that headwaters were not split from the rivers they spawned. The plan involved establishing two Boundary Commissions, one for the Punjab and one for Bengal, which would also adjudicate on Assam and Sylhet. These were to consist of an independent chairman with two Congress and two League members each.
The idea was that each party would nominate men of ‘high judicial standing’. Congress responded quickly, putting forward Mr Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan and Mr Justice Teja Singh, a Sikh, for the Punjab and Mr Justices C. C. Biswas and Bijan Kumar Mukherji for Bengal. It took the League longer to decide. In fact throughout these critical middle weeks of June the League comes over as an organisation reeling from the shock of now having to face up to the reality of just what creating a new country involved. It wasn’t until two weeks later, and after some prompting, that they came forward with Mr Justices Din Mohammed and Mohammed Munir for the Punjab and Abu Saleh Mohammed Akram and S. A. Rahman for Bengal. They were unlucky men, charged with perhaps the most unenviable task in the history of India, deciding which side of the new boundaries their countrymen would live. Communities and families would inevitably have to be divided from their land, from each other and either move or become part of a nation that they felt they did not belong to. Unsurprisingly these eight judges ended up adjudicating along communal lines and much of the final decision-making rested with the Boundary Commission chairman, for both the Punjab and Bengal, Sir Cyril Radcliffe. Attlee had originally asked for a High Court judge to be chairman but, in a reply which showed a depressingly narrow appreciation of national priorities, Jowitt, the Lord Chancellor, said they were all far too busy.30 Instead he recommended Radcliffe, a distinguished barrister who, Jowitt thought, might be prepared to do the job. He was coming to the end of a brilliant career, although, typically for the legal profession, the Lord Chancellor’s initial concern was what fee he might earn, telling Listowel that he commanded over £60,000 per annum at the Bar. Radcliffe knew nothing of India, and was apolitical, but these were both arguably advantages as they meant that he would arrive with no preconceptions. Much to his credit, he agreed to take on this poisoned chalice and actually did so for a very modest fee. The final composition of the commissions was not, however, publicly announced until 30 June and Radcliffe did not arrive in the stifling heat of Delhi, where he was to work, until 8 July. That gave him approximately a month to draw lines on a map that would decide the fate of millions.
The votes in the Bengal Assembly on 20 June and in the Punjab on 23 June went as expected. Having divided into communal blocs as specified under the plan, the Hindu-dominated West Bengal bloc voted by 58 votes to 21 for partition; the Hindus, who had so vociferously and violently opposed Curzon’s partition plan in 1905 were now determined that they, and Calcutta, would remain part of India. The East Bengal Assembly members predictably voted 106 to 35 that the province should not be divided. Having been outvoted on that, they then voted 107 to 34 that East Bengal should join Pakistan and by 105 to 34 that Sylhet should be amalgamated with the new state. In the Punjab, amid tight security, with the ‘approaches blocked by barbed wire barriers and the vicinity under heavy police guard’ and ‘with large sections of Lahore and scores of villages throughout the province fire blackened ruins’,31 the 168 members of the Legislative Assembly cast their votes. The East Punjab members rejected a motion put by the League’s leader, the Khan of Mamdot, that they should remain a united province, voting by 50 to 22 for partition and to join India. The West Punjab members predictably rejected partition but, accepting that it was now inevitable, a majority of 91 decided to join Pakistan.32
The next major issue to resolve was how to divide the armed forces. On 12 June an Armed Forces Committee was established as part of the Partition Council, both Nehru and Liaquat insisting that the process should be under tight political control and that Auchinleck should be accountable to them. The principles were straightforward and had in fact already been thought through and summarised in an Indian Office paper on 27 May.33 It was agreed that troops should be moved so that by 15 August the maximum number ‘would be located in the state to which they belonged, that is in either of the two Pakistan states or in the rest of India’.34 Muslim units would be transferred to Pakistan, Hindu and Sikh units would remain in India. The Willcox Committee, however flawed its concept, had at least made that division relatively easy. In the navy, air force and the army’s supply services, where classes and creeds were all mixed, individual soldiers could choose; no Muslim would be forced to serve Pakistan nor any Hindu forced to serve India. The new Pakistan Army was to be based around Headquarters Northern Command in Rawalpindi, which would move to Karachi while the Indian Army would be based on Central Command in Meerut, which would move to Delhi, with subordinate headquarters initially at Poona, near Bombay, and at Ranchi in Bihar.
The Royal Indian Navy ships would be divided, thirty-two to India and sixteen to Pakistan. Royal Indian Air Force aircraft were to be divided on a squadron basis. In the army the division was roughly two thirds to India and one third to Pakistan, so India received twelve armoured regiments against Pakistan’s six, and seventy-five infantry battalions against thirty-five for Pakistan. This roughly reflected the army’s communal make up of 70 per cent Hindu and Sikh versus 30 per cent Muslim, despite Jinnah’s attempts to argue that the Muslim percentage was higher.35
Simple as all this might seem, it did not of course reflect the emotional issue of dividing regiments which had served together for decades, including through the recent war, and who rightly prided themselves on their communal harmony. ‘At regimental level, as throughout the army, there was a sad, indeed a grim feeling of frustration and doubt, anxieties both general and personal for the immediate future extended to all ranks, including the British officers’, wrote Captain Pocock of the 19th Lancers.36 Sixteen British officers had already been posted out, most found places in regiments in the British Army, and they had been replaced by ‘young and inexperienced officers both Hindu and Muslim’. The 19th Lancers were stationed in Peshawar and were to become part of the new Pakistan Army. Now not only would those new Hindu officers have to leave but so would their Sikh and Jat squadrons. The Sikhs were to go to Skinner’s Horse and the Hindu Jats to the Central India Horse, both to become Indian regiments. The Muslim squadrons from the Poona Horse and the Central India Horse would move to Peshawar to become the 19th Lancers. Their journeys were to prove almost as dangerous as fighting the Japanese in Burma. The tensions had already caused the British officers to send all the regimental silver back to England, an unpopular and tactless decision. It was not finally returned to Pakistan until 1950.
‘There was very little Muslim/Hindu antipathy in the army’, recalled D. K. Dalit of the Baluch Regiment, the officer who had assisted with famine relief in Bengal, ‘but we were very sad at losing each other. But those who felt we could have one army were unrealistic and people buckled to and reconstructed. Quite a few Hindus opted to stay with their regiments in Pakistan but most eventually came back to India. In my battalion, the sixth, we had three Muslim companies – one of Pathans and two of Punjabi Muslims, and one company of Brahmins’ who went back to India. Dalit himself was posted to command an Indian Gurkha b
attalion. He took it over from a British commanding officer, David Armor, but the rest of the British officers still in post were resentful of him and behaved badly. Again they were packing up all their silver, as if the regimental tradition would end with the Raj, and Dalit had to appeal to the honorary colonel to have it returned. He then asked all British officers to leave immediately.37
K. P. Candeth, the Indian artillery officer, thought that although initially nearly every officer was against dividing the army, having grown up together in their regiments and with deep unit loyalty, they began to realise during 1946, given the violence and as the political atmosphere became toxic, that ‘one class’ armies were inevitable. His regiment was stationed in the West Punjab and was made up of Punjabi Brahmins and Punjabi Muslims. The Brahmins started to lose family in the March killings and resentment grew against his Muslim soldiers. The Muslims left in July so that by 15 August, when the regiment was stationed back in India, it was an almost entirely Brahmin unit. They would soon be heavily involved in trying to police their homeland.
The reorganisation also meant that just when the army should have been at its busiest maintaining order it would be consumed with reorganising itself. It was, however, always made clear, and agreed by the leaders at their 3 June meeting and again at the Partition Council on 16 June, that the needs of internal security should take precedence.38 Auchinleck was told to ‘impress upon the Provincial Governments on behalf of the Partition Council the need to reduce to the absolute minimum the number of troops they required’. He did so constantly and too eagerly, his heart never really being in using his beloved army to do what was arguably its primary role.
The British also had the very clear notion, which does not appear to have been fully taken in by either Nehru or Liaquat, who tended to lead for Jinnah on military matters, that both the new armies would remain under a central Supreme Commander, initially Auchinleck, with a ‘Central Administrative Machinery’. This would answer to a Joint Defence Council to be chaired by the governor general. This was partly because of the realisation that they would need to deploy troops on a joint basis during the coming months, partly to sweep up the endless administrative issues that division entailed but also because there was a feeling the two new nations would be able to work together in some sort of federated way on matters that involved the armed forces. Looking back it may seem naive; at the time it was a worthy objective and shows just how far the coming holocaust would cause relations to break down.
It was also seen as a natural extension of the Dominion status, which was consuming so much political time. If both states were members of the Commonwealth, and acknowledged the King’s role as its head, even if his style of address had to be changed so there was no mention of him being an ‘emperor’, a word India justifiably hated, then it would be possible for British officers to stay on and help the new armies find their feet. There were very few senior Indian officers, with only one major general, the forthright and charismatic K. M. Cariappa, who spoke no Hindi so only communicated with his soldiers in English, and still dressed formally for dinner every night even when dining alone. Only 5 per cent of the brigadiers and 10 per cent of the colonels were Indian. At the beginning of June there were still 8,200 British officers serving in the Indian Army, 630 in the air force and 240 in the navy.39
Liaquat had persistently said that Pakistan would like British officers to stay on, a request which had formed part of the League’s negotiating tactics. Nehru was more circumspect. His dislike of the army was still occasionally boiling over. During his visit to the Punjab on 22 June he had ‘lost control of himself and demanded the sacking of every officer from the Governor downwards’ and Patel made the by now rather stale comment that the ‘Brits had no difficulty in maintaining law and order when putting down Congress and the Freedom Movement’.40 Auchinleck commented acidly that he didn’t think many officers would want to stay on in India given speeches like that and ‘the mistrustful attitude frequently adopted towards them’.41
Field Marshal Montgomery, then Chief of the Imperial General Staff and Britain’s most senior soldier, now decided to intervene in this already complicated debate. He had no business being in India, which was acknowledged as very much the commander-in-chief’s domain, added to which Auchinleck heartily loathed him for the tactless way he had taken over from him command of 8th Army in North Africa. He now took it upon himself to visit Delhi and interview Nehru, who was remarkably gracious in the circumstances. Montgomery had two questions. The first was how India would react should the British retain Gurkha regiments in the British Army as opposed to the Indian Army. This may have seemed a strange thing to ask, given that the Gurkhas were recruited from Nepal, an independent country, but they would be dependent on India for transport and support. Nehru disliked the Gurkhas even more than most soldiers. He told Montgomery that they were unpopular troops as they had been used for ‘imperial purposes. A year ago they had come into conflict with the Indonesians and caused much resentment’. Retaining them in the British Army could appear as a ‘continuation of the old imperialist method of holding down colonial territories’. He strongly opposed using such soldiers ‘against people struggling for freedom’. He was also suspicious that the British might continue recruiting in Pakistan. Ultimately he did agree, partly because the Indians wanted to retain Gurkhas in their own army, and an allocation was agreed of six regiments staying with the Indian Army and four to the British, although so many individual Gurkhas wanted to stay in India that the Indian Army subsequently soon had to create extra regiments.42
Among the Gurkhas themselves there was considerable anger at how the selection of regiments was handled. J. P. Cross was sure his 1st King George V’s Own Gurkha Rifles would go to the British Army being the most senior regiment. ‘Bitter indeed was our disappointment at not being chosen’, he recorded, ‘we could not understand how and why we had been omitted from the list’. It appeared that the decision was, typically, largely financial, it being cheaper to take those regiments with a battalion outside India into the British Army. ‘We knew’, he continued, ‘that it could not have been on merit. We officers were left without positive directions so could give none. Pressure of events obscured the heartbreak. Nor was there any properly planned handover to Indian officers. They never came till after the bitter end and the end was bitter’.43
Montgomery’s second question was put to both Nehru and Jinnah. When did they want British troops to leave? The consensus was by February 1948 although Jinnah again requested that British soldiers should stay on to serve with the new Pakistan Army.44 Auchinleck was, predictably, furious, pointing out that it was up to him to make arrangements for the future of British troops in India.45 But Montgomery’s question touched on a wider issue, which was what were British troops to do in the meantime? There was still, even by June, the feeling that they were primarily in India to protect Europeans but there were a lot of them, over 30,000, they were well equipped, mobile and had already been most effective in internal security duties as they were seen as impartial by most people, if not by Nehru. There was considerable correspondence between Whitehall and Delhi on the subject, which came to the conclusion that they should not be used for internal security duties after 15 August unless requested to do so by the new governments. In the meantime they sweated, bored in their barrack blocks, relishing the chance to get out and put down the odd riot.
There were the inevitable disagreements in the Armed Forces Committee, many of which were sorted out by Sir Chandulal Trivedi, the governor of Orissa, who Mountbatten drafted in as a troubleshooter after having one of his ‘brainwaves’. Trivedi was a good choice. A life-long friend of Liaquat, he was also trusted by both Nehru and Patel and had been secretary of the Defence Department during the war. After eight days negotiating he got the committee’s final report agreed by all sides so that when it came to the Partition Council on 30 June it ‘went off more smoothly than any meeting’ Mountbatten had seen.46
There is no doubt tha
t the reorganisation of the army was a considerable administrative achievement. However, armies are well used to moving and regrouping, and much of it stayed put. Throughout June and July Auchinleck would argue that he could not guarantee that the army would ‘retain its cohesion or remain a reliable instrument for use to aid the civil power in the event of widespread disturbances during this period of reconstitution’47 yet he still had his British soldiers and the Gurkhas, both unaffected by communal issues, and numbering nearly 65,000, and, at least in India the Dogras and Garhwalis, single-class regiments. Southern Command, in Madras, for example, had thirty deployable British battalion-sized units, seven Gurkha and thirty-nine Indian, many of whom were single class.
In Westminster Attlee was doing his best to get the Indian Independence Bill through Parliament. The Labour majority and Conservative acquiescence made its passage a foregone conclusion, but the drafting was complex and even now Churchill tried to have one last dig at it. He objected to it being called an ‘independence’ bill. His agreement had been based on the acceptance of Dominion status and he wrote to Attlee on 1 July suggesting that the bill would be better styled as the ‘Self Government Bill’ with both India and Pakistan becoming ‘two self-governing dominions’.48 The parliamentary authorities then said it was unthinkable in protocol terms to give Nehru and Jinnah advance copies of the bill, and it took Mountbatten to intervene directly with Attlee to ensure they were. The princes, fearful as to what the future might hold under Congress, were also lobbying in London and using all their Conservative Party contacts.49 Dominion status had also raised the delicate and esoteric issue of what to do with the monarch’s crown as Emperor of India. It had been purchased for the 1911 Durbar at a cost of £60,000, paid for by India. It couldn’t exactly be divided so the decision was that it should stay in London.50