Partition

by Barney White-Spunner

  However much Tara Singh may have protested to the contrary, and genuine as were the efforts of Baldev Singh and possibly those of other senior Sikh leaders, they were unable to prevent the more populist Sikh leaders from rousing their followers, organising and arming them. Helped by a considerable number of ex-army NCOs, and benefiting from the acquisition of weapons and money that had been going on since March, the Sikhs of the East Punjab were now a formidable force. They organised themselves, in a way which the Punjabi Muslims never seemed able to match, in a series of gangs known locally as jathas, led by jathedars who were often older men and respected community leaders.

  Seven hundred miles away, Calcutta remained, to Tuker’s surprise, relatively calm. The city was full of arms and ammunition and there had been flare-ups during July. The worst had been at the Bata shoe factory. Members of a Hindu Union had gone on strike and rumours started to circulate that they were looting the houses of the Muslims who were still working. In the ensuing violence over one hundred people were killed. On 30 July eighteen people were killed in a series of separate incidents but there was no widespread breakdown as there had been the previous year. This was partly due to Sir Khawaja Nazimuddin, who was from a well-known Dacca family, having obtained the premiership of East Bengal and established a good working relationship with Dr Prafula Ghosh’s fledgling government of West Bengal. Ghosh was part of what was known in Bengal as the Khadi Group, Congress followers who were devotees of Gandhi, as were his ministers; the British unkindly referred to them as the ‘government by love party’ but Ghosh was doing his utmost to calm the Hindu population. The relative peace was also due to it being known that the hated Punjabi Muslim police, who had done so much to inflame the situation under Suhrawardy, would all be gone by 6 August as would 7,000 Muslim refugees from Bihar.

  Then, on 13 August, Gandhi arrived and took up residence in a crumbling house in Balliaghata. His reception was hostile, an unwelcome novelty for him, and a Hindu crowd, indignant at his help for Muslims, showered his car with stones and bottles. He was soon visited by a joint Sikh/Hindu delegation who demanded to know why he was in Calcutta when he should be helping quell the violence in the Punjab. They threatened him with his own tactics, saying they would squat around his house until he left. Gandhi remained unperturbed. He started a series of daily prayer meetings, at which the attendance gradually swelled, and he also persuaded Suhrawardy to come and stay with him. Hindu wags wondered how the corpulent Suhrawardy would cope with Gandhi’s simple fare. Gandhi was to stay on in Calcutta, missing the independence celebrations in Delhi, his presence helping, at least initially, to prevent the city from repeating the slaughter of the previous year.

  Yet perhaps the main reason Calcutta remained calm was that Tuker flooded the city with troops. In the first two weeks of August, five British and two Gurkha battalions were permanently patrolling alongside six Indian battalions, Rajputs, Madrassis and Punjabis, one advantage at least of the long-standing policy of not recruiting Bengalis.

  Outside Calcutta, the rest of Bengal was also quiet. The main issue in East Bengal was once again food shortages, and Tuker found he had no problem in allocating aircraft to drop supplies. Bihar was now calmer, and the killings had stopped. Orissa was also calm and in the United Provinces Pandit Pant, that effective, forgiving man, had arrested the more extreme Hindu Mahasabha and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leadership as a precaution. The Mahasabha promptly invoked habeas corpus; Pant ignored them.

  Nevertheless Tuker felt the days drag by ‘with feet of lead’. He half longed for 15 August when he could hand over responsibility yet also dreaded what might happen when British troops were withdrawn from the streets. Calcutta Muslims, by now aware that their city would almost certainly remain in India, had ‘a sullen depression of spirits’, not helped by the Mahasabha’s and RSS’s propaganda telling Hindus that as soon as it was created Pakistan’s aim would be the conquest of ‘Hindustan and the forced conversion of Hindus to Islam’. They condemned Congress, whose leaders, they said, had betrayed them, and called for a united Hindu uprising. Hindus living in East Bengal had generally begun to leave and move west, although in Chittagong joint ‘Peace Committees’ had been formed from both communities who were rounding up the Muslim goondas who were threatening them.15

  Radcliffe’s report was ready by 12 August. He had, he would always maintain, completed it without interference or bias. Later he would be accused of changing his allocation of the important Punjab city of Ferozepore and the district of Zira immediately to its east. Both had a small majority Muslim population and logically, under Radcliffe’s guidelines, should have gone to Pakistan. Ferozepore was an important city which controlled the water supply to Bikaner state, immediately to its south in Rajputana, and was a major arsenal. It also had an important bridge over the River Sutlej. Jenkins had been particularly concerned about its future, predicting it could be a serious flashpoint should it go to Pakistan, and wanted to know whether he should deploy troops there. He had also been concerned about Gurdaspur, north-east of Amritsar and which controlled the land route to Kashmir. Radcliffe had, Beaumont said, sent Mountbatten a note with a draft map explaining what he was recommending so that he could give Jenkins early warning. This had, allegedly, been shown to the chairman of the Central Waterways Committee, Lala Adjudhia, who promptly told Patel. The evening before the report was due to be submitted, V. P. Menon appeared at Radcliffe’s bungalow and said the viceroy wanted to talk to him in private. Beaumont said he was not available so Menon went away but the next day Radcliffe was summoned to lunch with just Mountbatten and Ismay. When he came back he allegedly changed the line so that Ferozepore and Zira went to India. The allegation is that the Maharajah of Bikaner, an important ally in the princely camp, put pressure on Mountbatten alongside Nehru, threatening to accede to Pakistan if Ferozepore went. In 1948 the Pakistan government claimed to have found Radcliffe’s original map and complained to the United Nations but by that stage Radcliffe had shredded all his papers. Opinion was originally split as to whether this incident actually happened. The accession of Bikaner to Pakistan seemed incredible to many. Maharajah Gagul Singh, son of the great Sir Ganga Singh, who had been the only non-white member of the Imperial War Cabinet in the First World War and one of India’s most progressive autocrats, had been one of the first to declare for India. However, in February 1992 Beaumont published his own account, drawing on his papers that he had deposited in All Souls, making it clear that Radcliffe had changed his allocation.16 The pressure may have come direct from Bikaner, an old friend of Mountbatten’s, but it was likely to have been reinforced by Nehru; Beaumont thought that his assistant secretary, Ayer, had been secretly briefing Nehru via V. P. Menon throughout the process and that it was him who was to blame rather than Lala Adjudhia. Nehru also seemed to know that the Chittagong Hill Tracts were destined for Pakistan well ahead of any official announcement. Nehru was equally known to be concerned about Gurdaspur because of its link to his beloved Kashmir, a remarkably prescient concern as events were soon to prove, but Beaumont did not think that Radcliffe had changed that city from Pakistan to India despite subsequent accusations.17

  What Mountbatten definitely influenced was the timing of the Boundary Commission announcement, which he wanted delayed until after the independence celebrations on 15 August. He justified this by saying that although ‘there was considerable advantage in immediate publication so that the new boundaries could take effect from 15th August’, it had also ‘been obvious all along that the later we postponed publication, the less would the inevitable odium react upon the British’.18 Given that his job was to serve Attlee, there was some sense in that rather selfish view but many felt the uncertainty made the situation in the Punjab even worse. Auchinleck, never allowing an opportunity to criticise Mountbatten to pass, complained that it ‘was having a most disturbing and harmful effect’ but Mountbatten had his way and delayed briefing the political leaders until 16 August with the public announcement the nex
t day.

  There was also a genuine wish to make much of the significance of 15 August and the birth of two nations. ‘Nothing’, John Christie thought, should mar ‘the rejoicing and triumph of those two days in the capital cities. There was’, he continued, inaccurately, ‘a lull in the communal ferocity’.19 The 15th of August would be one of the most terrible days in the bloody history of Amritsar but in Karachi and Delhi the emphasis was now on the celebration of nationhood. Hindu astrologers had declared that 15 August was an inauspicious day to transfer power in India. The compromise was that instead it would be transferred at midnight on 14 August, with Pakistan’s independence celebrations taking place earlier that day in Karachi.

  Jinnah left Delhi for Karachi on 7 August. The Mountbattens flew to join him on the evening of 13 August for the start of the celebrations. Shahid Hamid accompanied Auchinleck. They went first to Lahore to confer with Jenkins and Rees. As they flew low over the East Punjab they saw large areas burning, obviously, Hamid noted ‘Muslim areas’ and column after column of refugees heading for Pakistan. ‘Smoke covered the countryside. It presented a grim picture.’ Rees pressed Auchinleck for more troops and more mobility. The soldiers he did have were already committed to villages but they needed to conduct more mobile patrolling. The railway staff were too afraid to leave their houses. There were no police to guard the trains anyway and it was yet another task that fell to the army.20

  Mountbatten was rather pleased to be told that the crowd that lined the route as he drove into Karachi was ‘noticeably larger than that which had lined the route for Jinnah’s arrival’ and, he could not resist adding, ‘I found this hard to believe but it was confirmed from one or two other sources’. That evening there was a state banquet for fifty people in what had been the Governor of Sind’s house, which was now Jinnah’s official residence. The banquet was attended by some of the leading citizens of Pakistan, which, Mountbatten thought, ‘included some very queer looking “jungly” men’, the tribal leaders from the Frontier. Hamid felt the atmosphere was tense. Jinnah made a short speech and toasted His Majesty the King, the only time, Hamid thought, that he had ever done so to date. Mountbatten spoke at length and justified why the date for the transfer of power had been brought forward. After the banquet there was a reception in the garden for over a thousand people. Jinnah looked ‘frail, tired and pre-occupied’. He told Hamid that he wanted to go to bed but Mountbatten wouldn’t leave. Hamid was deputed to whisper to the viceroy that it was time to go.21

  The creation of Pakistan, so different from how Jinnah had at first envisaged it, took place at a short ceremony in the Assembly hall in Karachi the next morning. Present in the circles of seats facing the stage were representatives of the wide cross-section of peoples who now made up this country of two halves, their capitals 1,000 miles apart. Alongside the tribesmen, the Pathans, Afridis, Wazirs and Mahsuds sat Punjabis and men from Baluchistan, and beside them the Bengalis from a province Jinnah had yet to visit. John Christie had written Mountbatten’s speech. He had felt it was a bit predictable at the time. ‘The birth of Pakistan is an event in history’, it read, somewhat obviously. ‘History seems sometimes to move with the infinite slowness of a glacier, and sometimes to rush forward in a torrent’, Mountbatten intoned, although Christie had originally written ‘spate’. ‘We who are making history today are caught and carried on in the swift current of events. There is no time to look back. There is only time to look forward.’ Mountbatten paid tribute to Jinnah and the two men seemed to be as near friendship as they were ever to achieve.22

  After the ceremony Jinnah, his sister and the Mountbattens drove in open cars to the airport. This was more of a trial than it appeared as the CID, or what was left of it, which was effectively a young detective called Savage who should have returned to England, had confirmed that there was a serious threat of a bomb attack on the procession by Sikh extremists and the RSS. As the open cars crawled past the hundreds of thousands of cheering Pakistanis, Jinnah expected at any moment that both he and his dream would end in shattered fragments. When they did finally arrive safely at the airport, ‘even the austere Jinnah himself showed some emotion’. He turned to Mountbatten and, putting his hand on the viceroy’s knee, said, ‘Thank God I have brought you out alive’. Fatima Jinnah then kissed Pamela Mountbatten on both cheeks with ‘tears in her eyes’.23

  Some of those who were present felt the atmosphere that day was muted. It was ‘marked by a surprising lack of popular enthusiasm’ and a ‘general air of apathy’, thought the correspondent of The Times, despite the celebrations coinciding with the feast of Eid and the end of the Ramadan fast. He did, however, say that Pakistan had emerged as the leading state of the Muslim world. ‘From today Karachi takes rank as a new centre of Muslim cohesion and a rallying point for Muslim thought and aspiration.’24 Others felt the day had been jubilant. ‘All along the route there was great enthusiasm and wild cheering’, Hamid recalled. ‘It was a sight for sore eyes and difficult to describe. A dream was coming true and a state was being born. The name of the Quaid-e-Azam was on everyone’s lips as well as their thanks to the Almighty.’25

  In Dacca the celebrations were generally considered more lively. There was a distinct lack of the new nation’s flags, the dark green with the Islamic crescent picked out in white, Mountbatten having failed to persuade either Jinnah or Nehru to include a small Union Jack in the corner, but people were in a more festive mood. Overall, the fact that the celebrations took place at all, that the ceremony was dignified and that the crowd control worked was a triumph for Jinnah and Liaquat who only a month before had been arguing over the number of typewriters their new nation should be allocated. Now they had to build a nation.

  Early in the evening of 14 August, back in Delhi, Nehru’s ministers, the men and women who would form India’s first government, were blessed in Dr Rajendra Prasad’s garden. A Brahmin holy man intoned scriptures while they were anointed with holy water and the red vermilion dot, the Hindu ‘third eye’, was placed on their foreheads. Later that evening, as the clock approached midnight, they started to gather in the Constituent Assembly. Hundreds of thousands would join them outside. Kushwant Singh, who had been practising law in Lahore, had driven down the Grand Trunk Road to be there. He described it as the most ‘eerie’ drive he had ever had. The road was deserted. He did not see a soul, no traffic, no bullock carts and no people apart from jeeps full of armed Sikhs whom he assumed had been butchering Muslims. The atmosphere in Delhi was extraordinary. The crowd was enormous. People were yelling and there was a great feeling of enthusiasm and euphoria. Everyone was shouting Gandhi’s name; he was credited with bringing India to freedom, even though he was now hundreds of miles away in Calcutta.26 The celebrations were wild, even though half the population of Delhi was living on the pavements or in refugee camps. There was a huge upsurge of goodwill towards ‘the Brits’ with ‘stiff colonels lifted shoulder high and carried around the city’. Somehow everything the British had done in the past had been forgiven.27

  The mood in the Constituent Assembly was, the Daily Telegraph thought, subdued. The members seemed nervous and silent.28 Nehru spoke just before midnight. His speeches were never extemporaneous but rather the result of long hours of crafting and rehearsal. This, perhaps the most important speech of his life, was no exception and, with his understanding of the power of the English language and his soft, clear articulation, it has deservedly passed into history. ‘Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny’, he started, his voice broadcast to the vast crowds surrounding the Assembly building, ‘and now that time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.’ It was, Kushwant Singh thought, immaculately crafted and very well worded. Nehru made no mention of the unfolding tragedy but Kushwant Singh, who would lose everything he owned in Lahore, felt that did not matter. He felt somehow he would get back to it all. The
two things, the celebration of independence and the realisation of the enormous tragedy it represented, seemed just to go side by side. As Nehru finished speaking, and as the clock struck midnight, a Congress trumpeter blew a conch shell in the Assembly gallery, unkindly described as a ‘toneless shriek’ but a nice juxtaposition to the pomp of the Raj’s trumpeters.29 The Assembly members then sang ‘Hindustan Hamara’, ‘India is Ours’, written by Mohammed Iqbal. ‘Then Delhi became a babel of noise and rejoicing’, the Daily Telegraph continued. ‘Trumpets blared, motor horns roared, fireworks, temple bells, guns, conch shells all added to the din.’30

  The next day, 15 August itself, started with Mountbatten, no longer viceroy, being sworn in as governor general. Scores of servants toured what was now Government House, changing everything from the coat of arms over the Durbar Hall to the bands on the cigars. Later that day he processed with Nehru and the now governor general’s bodyguard to the raising of India’s national flag at the Red Fort. There had been some nervousness about the bodyguard. Paddy Massey, who commanded it, had been to see Ismay to say that his men of both classes, Sikhs and Punjabi Muslims, were receiving ‘news of horrible happenings in their homes and of murders of their kith and kin. He thought there was a real danger of their wreaking vengeance on each other’. Massey paraded his men and told them they represented two hundred years of unblemished tradition. The Muslim squadron would be sent to Pakistan to form Jinnah’s Governor General’s Bodyguard as soon as transport could be arranged. Surely the two factions could live at peace and continue to do their duty for the few days that remained? Both squadrons did eventually agree; they would perform their duties but no longer speak to each other.31