Raj

by Lawrence, James

  With the collapse of the elected government, the League unsuccessfully tried to cobble together a coalition. Simultaneously it launched a systematic campaign of intimidation, by which it hoped to assert its supremacy in the towns and countryside. Time was limited, for the British were scheduled to depart at the end of March 1948. As matters stood in March 1947, there was a distinct possibility that the Punjab might be bisected with the eastern segment attaching itself to India and the western to Pakistan. A truncated Punjab was wormwood to the League, adding to its economic disabilities, and was to be prevented at all costs. In any event, partition would be a complex business: 30 million Punjabis and Muslims, Sikhs and Hindu communities were everywhere intermingled.

  The killing, rape and arson began on 4 March, and was at first concentrated in the cities and towns, with attacks on non-Muslims in Lahore, Amritsar, Multan, Rawalpindi, Jalandhar and Sialkot. Afterwards, the murder gangs spread out into the countryside. While the communal killings followed the pattern of the previous year, Jenkins was certain their motive was now political. In Rawalpindi and its hinterland: ‘The underlying idea was to eliminate the non-Muslim fifth column; in Lahore the Muslims wanted to scare away the non-Muslim element in the population and so on.’38 Inevitably, Hindus and Sikhs struck back and paid out their enemies in their own currency. Planning was methodical, with small bands of terrorists collecting at pre-arranged points before making their attacks. Their victims were stabbed or slashed to death, their property plundered and houses burned. Rape was a common instrument of coercion: it was a way of humiliating husbands, fathers and brothers which both demonstrated their powerlessness and, given local custom, violated their property. To avoid it, many women took their own lives, like the Sikhs in Rawalpindi, or were killed by their husbands.39 In towns and cities, roving parties killed in what had now become the customary manner, stealing up on an isolated individual, stabbing him and then vanishing down alleyways. Bodies of assassins shifted quickly and melted away whenever troops or police approached, which made catching them hard. Nonetheless, the trouble was finally contained in the Rawalpindi district; patrols from the Norfolk regiment intercepted Muslim villagers armed with lathis as they approached the city and, together with police, opened fire on any mobs they encountered. By 25 March, army HQ at Rawalpindi reported that morale among British and Indian troops was high, with an absence of any communal feeling among the latter and a widespread revulsion against the communal violence. Why, soldiers asked, could people who had lived together for so long suddenly turn on each other?40 Again, as in Rajasthan, Indian soldiers had remained true to the army.

  The security forces had imposed what turned out to be a temporary armistice. After a period in which all sides re-grouped and re-armed, the massacres resumed on 10 May and worsened steadily for the next two months. Given enough troops, Jenkins believed that he could contain and eventually suppress the disturbances. On 21 May he saw Mountbatten at Simla and asked for at least 20,000 reinforcements, which would be needed if there was no co-operation from the party leaders.41 Even if this was forthcoming, it was unlikely to have any impact in the Punjab. Jinnah, Nehru and Patel were already making appeals for calm and goodwill which were as sincere as they were ineffective. Only Gandhi, through personal appearances in which he used the full weight of his moral authority, had any success, and this was in Bihar and Calcutta. Jenkins suspected that when other politicians visited distressed areas they did so ‘nominally as Members of the Central Government, but in fact as communal leaders’.42

  The additional forces were refused by the Viceroy. His declaration on 2 June that the date of the transfer of power would be brought forward to 15 August, and the Punjab was to be divided between India and Pakistan, added immeasurably to the turmoil. On 24 June, Hindus and Sikhs appealed through Jenkins for a neutral frontier zone to be established immediately. This suggestion, which might have saved thousands of lives, was cursorily turned down on the grounds that Muslims would object.43 They did not, for they were never asked. In the first week of August, when arrangements were in hand for the east–west division of the Punjab between India and Pakistan, 7,500 men (the Punjab Boundary Force) were allocated for the border area. Jenkins was appalled; he protested on 13 August that they were utterly inadequate to keep the peace in an area where 14 million people lived in nearly 18,000 villages.44 Mountbatten knew exactly the nature and scope of the problem from the detailed and extensive reports collected by military and civil intelligence, and the assessors’ accurate prognoses as to what would happen if preventive measures were not taken. These reports confirmed what he had seen at Gurgaon on 1 June and in other distressed areas on other, later occasions. When he recalled these experiences twenty-two years later, his strongest memory was of the warm welcome given to his wife by the refugees among whom she undertook charitable work.45

  There were Cassandras among the Indian leadership. On 19 March, Patel had asked Wavell for martial law in the Punjab, but was refused since by this date the authorities were getting the upper hand. He repeated his request with the same result at the very end of May.46 On 23 June, Jinnah pleaded with Mountbatten: ‘I don’t care whether you shoot Muslims or not, it has got to be stopped.’ Nehru was of like mind, and internal security was the cause of hysterical exchanges during a Cabinet meeting two days later, during which Indian ministers slated the Viceroy for what they alleged was a British failure to maintain order. Mountbatten subsequently told London that

  the League started attacking me and saying that there would soon be no city left for them to inherit. Baldev [Singh] chimed in with a ‘shoot everyone on sight’ cry; upon which Patel pointed out that the only people shot by troops were the wretched householders who were forced into the streets during curfew hours when their houses were set on fire!47

  The session ended in a whimper, with a decision to form a local security commission in the Punjab with members drawn from all three communities. How this would stop the fighting, or save lives, was never made clear. What was clear, both then and as the Punjabi crisis became more acute, was that Mountbatten and the Indian leaders were primarily concerned with their public images. The search was for scapegoats rather than solutions.

  The Punjab imbroglio was an irritating distraction for Mountbatten who, from the announcement of his final plan, was solely concerned with its implementation before his ten-week deadline. There was no room for flexibility of approach or interpretation, and momentum had to be sustained, come what may. Watching Mountbatten at work during this period, Shahid Hamid noted: ‘He believes in giving no time to others to think, analyse or absorb.’48 Such intellectual exercises did not come naturally to a man who believed that action was the essence of government. Internal security considerations were low on the viceregal list of priorities, which meant, ultimately, that the Punjabis would be free to kill, rape, steal and burn as they wished. In the meantime, two Indias had to be created, and the people, resources and treasures of the old divided equitably. Swift surgery was the only alternative to prolonged blood-letting – or so it seemed from the perspectives of Delhi and Simla.

  IV

  The first phases of the process of dividing and quitting passed remarkably smoothly. Attlee and the Cabinet rubber-stamped the viceregal plan and, when the time came for its implementation, the requisite legislation was rushed through Parliament in three days. India’s political leaders and parties accepted the proposals, and measures were taken for the disputed regions – Bengal, the Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province – to decide their own destinies. By 17 July, and after a series of votes, the Bengal assembly agreed to split the province into two parts, with the western, including Calcutta, joining India and the eastern (from 1971 Bangladesh) joining Pakistan. The Punjabi assembly decided in like manner for an east–west partition, although there was a strong feeling among the Sikhs for their own, autonomous state. The future of the North-West Frontier Province was settled by a highly unsatisfactory referendum on 15–17 July, which was boycotted by Congr
ess supporters, including Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s Red Shirts. Only half the 573,000-strong electorate voted, with 289,000 opting for Pakistan and 2,900 for India.

  There remained princely India, with its population of 100 million and over five hundred rulers whose ancestors had conceded British paramountcy in return for protection and co-operation. The states had been largely immune to pre-war nationalist agitation, although with the creation of the federation in 1935 many princes imagined that they were about to be thrown to the Congress wolves. During the war, the princes had been unsparing in their support of the war effort: the Maharaja of Travancore purchased a patrol boat for the RIN; the Nawab of Bhopal sold his American securities to pay for fighter aircraft; the Maharaja of Kashmir supplied eighteen field ambulances; and the Nizam of Hyderabad footed the bill for three squadrons of warplanes.49 Three hundred thousand volunteers from the states had joined India’s armed forces, and their rulers bought 180 million rupees’ worth of war bonds. Yet the Raj which they had supported so generously seemed bent on seeking an accommodation with the politicians who had done all within their power to fracture the war effort. In November 1946, Hamidullah Khan, the Nawab of Bhopal, ruefully observed: ‘The British seem to have abdicated power and what is worse have handed it over . . . to the enemies of all their friends.’ He had in mind Congress, which was republican in spirit and determined to strip the princes of their sovereign powers. After consulting his court astrologer in October 1946, Jeswant Rao Holkar, Maharaja of Indore, heard that: ‘Guru has been the only protective planet in the Horoscope but he also becomes weak and evil from January 1947.’ Between March and August malign influences hung over the maharaja.50

  These foretokens proved remarkably accurate for Holkar and all his kind. Their ancestral loyalty to the Crown was now no more than a device to lever them from power. In March, George VI, the last King Emperor, asked his cousin, the last Viceroy, to persuade the princes to confront ‘the inevitable’ and inveigle them into whatever new state or states emerged. It was a task for which Mountbatten was ideally suited, since he had a taste for intrigue – many years later he was told by Field Marshal Lord Templar: ‘You’re so crooked, Dickie, if you swallowed a nail you’d shit a corkscrew.’51 In private, the Viceroy was dismissive of the princes, whom he once characterised ‘a bunch of nitwits’ for not accepting democracy within their states and making terms with Congress.52 In fact, for the past two years, the princes had been introducing reforms intended to transform their states into constitutional monarchies.53

  The interests of the princes were upheld by an old-fashioned but fundamentally decent and honourable official, Sir Conrad Corfield, the head of the Political Department. He had little truck with India’s professional politicians and sympathised with the princes’ desire to keep them and their influence out of their domains. Aware of the drift of viceregal policy and unwilling to permit the states to be handed to Congress on a plate, Corfield discreetly approached the new Secretary of State, Lord Listowel. He secured a valuable concession: all the original agreements between the states and the Crown would lapse the day power was transferred to its successors. Neither India nor Pakistan would automatically inherit British paramountcy in so far as it affected the princes, who would become, in effect, independent rulers. Corfield also supervised the burning of four tons of documents held by his department which catalogued princely excesses and misdemeanours, to prevent them from being used by Congress for political blackmail.

  Mountbatten had never taken the trouble to discover what precisely was meant by ‘paramountcy’ in the context of the princes. He had been outwitted by an official whom he consequently called ‘a son-of-a-bitch’. Nehru was incensed to the point of apoplexy by Corfield’s coup; it presaged a disunited India and was a reverse for Congress, which had intended to take over the states with the minimum of fuss. When the matter was discussed in Mountbatten’s presence on 13 June, Nehru angrily accused Corfield of dishonesty, and afterwards badgered the Viceroy to dismiss him as ‘an enemy of India’.54

  As usual, Mountbatten buckled under Nehru’s pressure. Rather than legally unravel the problem of the princes’ future status, the Viceroy resorted to machination. Effective control over the affairs of the states was removed from the Political Department and delivered into the self-interested hands of Congress and the League, who were permitted to form their own States Departments. The former were run by V. P. Menon and Sardar Patel, both of whom were prepared to employ underhand methods to prevent any princely declarations of independence. Stripped of British protection, the states, particularly the smaller ones, would be vulnerable to Congress subversion and, Menon imagined, it would be easy to engineer popular uprisings. Such devices might not be needed, for, as he rightly guessed, Mountbatten would offer himself as an accomplice in any political initiative designed to keep the states inside India or Pakistan.55 Meanwhile, and with the encouragement of Corfield, the rulers of Travancore and Hyderabad (the largest, most populous and richest state) were entertaining daydreams of future independence. Far away to the north, and sensing the direction in which the wind was blowing, the Faqir of Ipi contemplated declaring himself amir of an autonomous Waziristan. He may have expected some assistance from Congress, to which he had contributed funds and support.56

  Most of India’s princes shared the apprehension of the Nawab of Bhopal. On 22 July he told Mountbatten:

  We wish to retain our relations with Great Britain, a monarchy, rather than to merge ourselves with an unfriendly political party which may tomorrow be ousted by Communist-dominated elements and which is almost certain to leave the British Commonwealth of Nations as soon as can be conveniently arranged. There is no guarantee of what the future Dominion of India will be. Are we to write out a blank cheque and leave it to the leaders of the Congress party to fill in the amount?

  He concluded with a heartfelt appeal for an end to ‘all this backhanded Balkan diplomacy’ and the opening of ‘negotiations on the level – fair and above board’. Mountbatten did not read the letter, but passed it to an experienced dabbler in ‘backhanded Balkan diplomacy’, V. P. Menon, for his advice.57

  Menon drew up the form of accession, a document which asked each prince to attach his principality to either India or Pakistan before 15 August. Superficially open-ended, the paper was tantamount to a surrender of sovereignty, and acknowledgement that the new states had acquired paramountcy from the Raj. Despite the reservations of Listowel and the rest of the Cabinet, who believed the princes deserved more time, Mountbatten appealed to them on 25 July in terms which left no doubt that they had to sign immediately.58 Like Chaucer’s Pardoner, the Viceroy knew how to sell bogus wares through a mixture of flattery and threats. His most potent emotional weapon was his royal blood, and he used it skilfully, appearing before the princes adorned with all his decorations and warning them that if they refused his offer they would displease their King Emperor. Next came the menace: if the princes did not make terms with the politicians before the deadline, then would be deprived of the friendship of the Crown’s representative in India and would be forbidden to buy modern weapons. There was time for clowning. When one diwan said he did not know his master’s mind, Mountbatten picked up a glass paperweight, glanced at it and announced that it was a crystal ball which told him that the prince in question agreed to sign the accession document. The conjuror’s patter worked; most present did sign, but with heavy hearts.

  ‘For the Viceroy to use his influence, built upon the past exercise of paramountcy, in order to persuade trusting Rulers to accept such dubious propositions was, to say the least, unBritish,’ observed Corfield some years later. During the next few days, the recalcitrant had to endure personal arm-twisting. After one session with Mountbatten, the Diwan of Gwalior told Corfield that he now understood how the Austrian chancellor, Dollfuss, must have felt after being harangued by Hitler. ‘He had not expected to be spoken to like that by a British officer; after a moment’s pause, he withdrew the word “British”.’59 By 15 Augus
t, and after some intensive persuasion by the Viceroy and V. P. Menon, only the rulers of Hyderabad, Kashmir and the tiny Kathiawari state of Junagadh had not caved in and attached themselves to either India or Pakistan. All kinds of sticks and carrots had been employed. At one stage in the negotiations with Hyderabad, Mountbatten was heartened to hear that the nizam might be swayed by his second son being accorded the title ‘His Highness’.60 More forceful measures were employed in Travancore, where an attempt was made to assassinate the diwan on 25 July against a background of threats of Congress-backed disturbances. On 1 August, a satisfied Viceroy reported to London that afterwards ‘the States Peoples Organisation [i.e. V. P. Menon and Sardar Patel] turned the heat full on and Travancore immediately gave in’. He added that Travancore’s change of heart and the reasons for it have ‘had a profound effect on all the other States and is sure to shake the Nizam [of Hyderabad]’.61

  Milder but equally persuasive methods were employed by Mountbatten to tamper with the Boundary Commission. Its task was to draw a border between India and Pakistan which, as far as possible, would accommodate Hindus and Muslims. The Commission comprised two Muslim and two Hindu judges under the chairmanship of Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a jurist of the utmost integrity but with no Indian experience and a tendency to wilt under the heat. The five men were given five weeks in which to complete their task, a deadline which Radcliffe believed unrealistic.62 Similarly unrealistic was the belief that the commissioners could undertake their evaluation in total secrecy. There were at least two of their staff who passed on secret information to Jinnah, Nehru and Menon, which enabled them to plead special causes to the theoretically impartial Mountbatten.

  The most significant leak was made by Rao Bahadur Lala Adjudhia Khosla, the chairman of the Central Waterways, Irrigation and Navigation Committee, who delivered to Nehru details of the allocation of the districts of Firozpur, Zehra and Gurdaspur on the projected frontier between West (Pakistani) and East (Indian) Punjab. Called as a specialist witness, Khosla was concerned with the vital irrigation canal systems in these areas, and he revealed to Nehru that Radcliffe was contemplating handing Firozpur and Zehra to Pakistan and Gurdaspur to India. The former worried him: ‘For the strategic and irrigation point of view it will be most dangerous to let Firozpur go to Pakistan.’ The town was a natural defensive outpost, for it controlled the only bridge across the upper Sutlej, which was the natural barrier between India and Pakistan. Furthermore, the water supplies to Bikaner and East Punjab could be imperilled by whoever gained Firozpur. For these reasons, Khosla urged Nehru to approach Mountbatten, a suggestion which throws considerable light on the Viceroy’s reputation for even-handedness.63