Indian Summer

by Alex Von Tunzelmann

  In the cramped, ancient alleys of Old Delhi, steam billowed forth from vats of boiling milk, filling the air with the delicate scents of rosewater and cardamom as the city’s confectioners toiled to meet endless orders for sweets. The heavy rationing of sugar was not permitted to spoil the fun: ‘the blackmarketeer is having the time of his life, combining patriotism with business.’61 Nehru gave a splendid speech to a huge crowd, undiminished by the sheeting monsoon rain. ‘I felt happy at coming into close personal contact with great crowds again’, he wrote to his sister, Nan, who had left for her ambassadorial posting in Moscow a few days before. ‘I still seem to appeal to them.’62 He was thrilled to see the flags unfurling all over the capital, stamping a new Indian identity on the British city. ‘You do think they’re really going, don’t you,’ a respected political analyst asked an American journalist; ‘this is not just a subterfuge so they can come back when their crisis at home is over?’63 But they were going. As the chimes sounded and the unexpected blast from a conch shell startled the delegates in the chamber of the Constituent Assembly, a nation that had struggled for so many years, and sacrificed so much, was freed at last from the shackles of Empire.

  Yes, Britain was finally free.

  By the following morning the world had turned once, and changed for ever. India and Pakistan were dominions. Britain had surrendered the keystone of its Empire. And yet at 8.30 sharp the Mountbattens were once again sitting on gold and scarlet thrones in New Delhi’s majestic Durbar Hall. Lord Mountbatten, resplendent in a uniform, was saluted by trumpet fanfares from the upper gallery. Meanwhile, according to Mildred Talbot: ‘Probably every woman present marveled at the cool appearance of Lady Mountbatten who, in the midst of Delhi’s indescribable summer heat, was stunning in gold lamé, arm-length gloves, and the appropriate jewelry including a gold tiara.’64

  This almost monarchical ceremony installed Mountbatten in his new democratic role as Governor General of India. For, though there had been a revolution, the Empire had not been overthrown. The British had got away with their dignity intact, and their majesty undimmed. The Mountbattens drove to the Council House for an inaugural meeting, at which Lord Mountbatten read out a message to India from his cousin, King George VI. ‘Freedom-loving people everywhere will wish to share in your celebrations,’ the King had written, ‘for with this transfer of power by consent comes the fulfilment of a great democratic ideal to which the British and Indian peoples alike are firmly dedicated.’65 An overdue retreat had been turned into a great British victory.

  No cynicism blighted the mass celebrations that day. While the dignitaries of the Constituent Assembly delivered their speeches in the Council Chamber, the Indian tricolour was raised above the building for the first time. For a few minutes, there was silence along the grand avenue of Kingsway, as the hundreds of thousands assembled (some on roofs, or hanging out of trees) took in the long-wished-for sight. But a gradual rumbling soon swelled into a cheer, which was renewed as Nehru came out on to the balcony. When the Mountbattens emerged, another shout of approval went up. Before he and his wife got into their state coach, Lord Mountbatten, knowing exactly how to serve the moment, turned and saluted both his friend Nehru and the Indian flag.

  After lunch and a quick change, the Mountbattens were driven in a parade down the whole length of Kingsway to India Gate, through streets so packed with crowds that they were unable to get out of their coach. In the blistering heat of that afternoon, Princes’ Park was crammed with hundreds of thousands of free Indians. The park was a monument to royalty, with a colossal statue of King George V in a pagoda at the centre, and the palaces of five of India’s most magnificent princes arranged in a circle around it: the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Gaekwar of Baroda, and the Maharajas of Patiala, Bikaner and Jaipur. On Independence Day, it brimmed with ordinary people. Where 30,000 had been expected, at least ten times that number turned up: some estimates said as many as a million. An instant democracy blossomed, as peasant crowds stormed the grandstand which had been reserved for dignitaries, and cheerfully occupied it six to a chair.66 The crush was such that people could not lift a foot for fear they would never get it back to the ground. The Mountbattens’ daughter Pamela remembered that ‘it was raining babies! Because lots of women had brought their babies with them and they were being crushed. So they threw them up in the air in despair of having these babies crushed, and you just sort of caught a baby as it came down.’67 Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, saw one woman decide that her baby was probably safer with Lady Mountbatten, and pass it over. Edwina held the infant tightly in her arms.68

  Pamela was with Vallabhbhai Patel’s daughter, Maniben. Maniben was a tiny, fragile-looking woman, and Pamela began to fear seriously for her life as the crowd squeezed tighter. They were rescued by Nehru, who created a distraction by lifting off a nearby Indian’s topee and bashing another on the head with it. He climbed up on to a man’s shoulders, and surfed forwards over the shoulders of the crowd towards them. ‘Panditji came galloping over people, wearing sandals,’ Pamela remembered. Nehru pulled them towards the flag platform, which would provide something to stand against.

  ‘Where do I put my feet?’ asked Pamela. ‘I cannot walk on people.’

  ‘Of course you can walk on people,’ he replied. ‘Nobody will mind.’ Pamela indicated her high-heeled shoes, at which he added, ‘Well, take those shoes off then nobody will mind.’

  ‘And we walked over human bodies the whole way,’ remembered Pamela, ‘and the extraordinary thing about that day was that nobody did mind.’69

  Taken aback, Mountbatten and Nehru decided to abandon the carefully planned programme of ceremonial. Instead, the Governor General simply shouted from his carriage that the new Indian flag should be hoisted up, as he pulled fainting children out of the crowd and into safety. The new Indian tricolour unfurled to a chorus of joyous uproar. (The British flag was not hauled down first. Mountbatten had seen to it that all Union Jacks had been removed the night before.)70 As a salute was fired, a rainbow broke across the sky – a detail that one would dismiss as fanciful, were it not for the fact that so many observers insisted they had seen it.71 Mountbatten pointed up at this well-timed natural phenomenon, and the crowd went wild again. ‘I had never noticed how closely a rainbow could resemble the new Dominion flag of saffron, white and green,’ he mused in his report to the British government the next day.72

  The rest of the day was taken up with parties, speeches and almost impossible progressions through the undiminishing throngs in the streets. The Mountbattens’ coach was besieged as it returned to the Viceroy’s House (renamed Government House for the new era). As the coach trawled through the crowds, it picked up several stowaways. Four Indian ladies and their children crammed inside next to the Mountbattens, along with the Polish wife of a British officer. An Indian press photographer clung to the back. Nehru himself, unable to get to his car, sat cross-legged on the hood. The photographer was particularly struck by the people’s reaction to the Mountbattens, as they shouted out, ‘Pandit Mountbatten ki jai!’ (‘Hail Mountbatten!’) The next day, he was moved to tell Mountbatten’s press attaché: ‘At last, after two hundred years, Britain has conquered India.’73

  PART III

  THE BEGINNING

  CHAPTER 15

  PARADISE ON EARTH

  WHAT HAD BEEN ONE WAS NOT NOW TWO, BUT LEGION. INDIA and Pakistan were dominions within the British Commonwealth of Nations. Hyderabad, Kashmir, Bhopal, Indore, Kalat and Junagadh were of uncertain status, having refused to accede to either dominion, though Bhopal and Indore would soon accede to India, and Kalat ultimately to Pakistan. Owing to Jinnah’s laid-back policy, none of the ten princely states which were expected to go to Pakistan had acceded; British paramountcy was gone, and theoretically any of these could be recognized as independent nations. Even so, by the morning of 15 August, India was by population the second largest country in the world. On its eastern and western edges, the two chunks of Pakistan comprised the sixth l
argest country in the world. East and West Pakistan were separated by at least 725 miles of Indian territory, or a twenty-day journey by steamship around the edge. There was a good deal of bad feeling between India and Pakistan, and no borders – at least, none known to any but Sir Cyril Radcliffe and his secretary, for still the maps lay locked up on Mountbatten’s orders in a safe in Government House. In London, a Ministry of Works carpenter in a white apron and a Homburg hat briskly unscrewed the plaque to the left of the door on King Charles Street that read ‘India Office’, and replaced it with a new one: ‘Commonwealth Relations Office’.1

  On the morning of 16 August, Jawaharlal Nehru closed the celebrations, and hoisted the Indian tricolour over the Red Fort in Old Delhi, the splendid palace of Shah Jahan, grandson of Akbar. Half a million people crowded into the wide street around the fort, whose red sandstone towers had been the setting for generations of potentates. The great Mughals had shown their majesty from its ramparts at daybreak every morning. The last Mughal, Bahadur Shah II, had briefly ruled the Indian mutineers from its pillared halls. King George V, in plumes and medals, had ridden forth from it for his coronation as Emperor of India in 1911. Now it was the turn of a man who hoped to represent democratic India. Over the archway leading into the audience hall of the fort, its ornate white marble walls inlaid with jewels cut and polished to represent delicately blossoming flowers, a famous Persian inscription reads: ‘If there is a paradise on earth, it is this’. The crowd agreed, cheering Nehru wholeheartedly; and Edwina Mountbatten, standing at the Prime Minister’s side, wore an expression of unreserved joy. She had come fresh from another fight with Dickie, this time over his acceptance of a new earldom. Dickie wrote to his daughter Patricia that Edwina was ‘in despair’ at being promoted from Viscountess to Countess, ‘for she disapproves so much of all these nonsensical titles.’2

  ‘That the double change-over occurred amid widespread rejoicings and peaceful demonstrations happily confounds the Jeremiahs who foresaw trouble’, read the Times of India’s confident editorial.3 It spoke too soon. Nehru’s speech from the Red Fort was the last happy moment of the transfer of power. That afternoon, Mountbatten handed Radcliffe’s finished award to the leaders in Delhi, and cabled it to their counterparts in Karachi. ‘Nobody in India will love me for my award about the Punjab and Bengal’, Radcliffe had written bluntly to his stepson three days earlier, ‘and there will be roughly 80 million people with a grievance who will begin looking for me. I do not want them to find me.’4 He had the good sense to get on a plane to London on 17 August, and afterwards burnt all his papers relating to the partition.5

  It was inevitable that none of the parties would be happy, which was why Mountbatten had secured on 22 July an agreement from both governments-to-be that they would accept the award, whatever it was. They did so without pleasure. In Pakistan, the Communications Minister, Abdur Rab Nishtar, described the award as ‘the parting kick of the British’,6 while Liaquat was livid at the loss of Gurdaspur. In India, the reaction was no less grim. ‘Bhai [brother] and the other Congress leaders read it with deepening misery’, wrote Nehru’s sister, Betty Hutheesing.7 Patel could not contain his rage at the award of the Chittagong Hill Tracts to Pakistan. But it was the Sikh minister Baldev Singh’s wordless dejection that augured the worst for the trouble to come.8 The Sikh population that he represented, scattered between West Pakistan and India, received the news hardest of all. The inclusion of the western Punjab and Lahore in Pakistan provoked an immediate response. A wave of violence, familiar in its intent but renewed in its vigour, spilled forth across the Punjab.

  When Mountbatten had still been thrashing out the details of his plan, Gandhi had told him that there were two alternatives. Either British rule would be continued, or else there would be a bloodbath. ‘What should I do, then?’ Mountbatten had asked. Gandhi’s reply was typical. ‘You must face the bloodbath and accept it.’9

  The bloodbath would have to be faced with an immediacy and on a scale that shocked all the governments involved. Within hours of independence, the Punjab, which had been disturbed for several days, suffered a total collapse of public order. Penderel Moon was in Lahore in 15 August and found it mainly deserted or on fire. While he was discussing the situation in broad daylight with another British official, a gang of Muslims broke into a Hindu house across the street and plundered it. The official told him that the Muslim police had been siding with the mob, to the extent of offering armed cover from the roofs while Muslim rioters ransacked Sikh gurdwaras.10 On the afternoon of 16 August Sir Claude Auchinleck, now Supreme Commander of the Indian and Pakistani armies, reported to Mountbatten that the new dominion of India was already in a state of civil war.

  Less than a month before, the future governments of India and Pakistan had issued a joint declaration insisting that ‘in no circumstances will violence be tolerated’. There can be no doubt that the governments were genuine in their intention to preserve order, just as there can be no doubt that they had neither the imagination nor the capacity to do so. It had been believed, fancifully but firmly, that the local police and General Rees’s Boundary Force would be able to take care of any spots of bother.11 But the extent and vigour of communal tensions had been catastrophically underestimated.

  On 17 August, Nehru dropped everything and flew to the Punjab to meet Liaquat. Side by side, the two men appealed for peace through public appearances and broadcasts. Meanwhile, Lord and Lady Mountbatten flew to Bombay to see off the first contingent of British troops, and to celebrate all over again. By the shores of the Arabian Sea, on Bombay’s Ballard Pier, Mountbatten asked the 5000 men to break ranks and cluster around, just as he had so often in Burma during the war. He made a jovial speech, and had a message of good wishes from Nehru read out.

  Dickie and Edwina proceeded to a tea party at the Taj Mahal Hotel, and afterwards drove to Government House. The drive, just five miles around Back Bay, took almost an hour owing to the number of people lining the route – the Bombay police estimated 750,000.12 The Indian tricolour was waved all day by Lady Mountbatten and the crowds alike; they also waved the Union Jack. Just eighteen months before, remembered the journalist Phillips Talbot, the naval mutineers in Bombay had roused great crowds with cries of ‘Death to Englishmen!’ and ‘Britishers: Go Back!’ Now the cry was ‘Jai England!’ and ‘England zindabad!’13 ‘A senior British official was misty-eyed when he told me about it later,’ Talbot noted.14 Police cordons were broken as crowds swarmed the car. Dickie was overjoyed, and shouted ‘Jai Hind!’ all the way along Marine Drive. People climbed on to the footboard of his carriage to touch the hems of his gleaming naval whites, and he was ‘literally caressed for hundreds of yards by rapt admirers’, according to the Times of India.15

  Dickie returned to Delhi, while Edwina stayed in Bombay to visit her usual round of worthy institutions. It was the cheerful photographs of her kneeling on the floor to play with the happy, healthy children at the United Mills Welfare Centre that made it into the official album of the trip; but the grimmer scenes at the Matunga labour camp and the filthy slum area made a greater impact on her personally. Edwina trudged for hours around the grim hovels in which many thousands of the city’s poor lived, and was quoted in the newspapers describing the conditions as ‘appalling’.16 But the press baulked at reporting the full force of her comments, which decried the slums as a ‘constant reproach to the citizens of the great and wealthy city of Bombay’, and called on those citizens to wipe out this shame. The reception she received from the locals was one of rapturous approval.17

  Edwina arrived back in Delhi on 19 August. In the four days since partition, the Punjab had been reduced to open anarchy. Seventy thousand Muslims from India had already arrived in Lahore. The Pakistani government opened camps for 40,000, but the rest were obliged to fend for themselves. Meanwhile, Hindus and Sikhs fled the city. In April 1947, the Hindu and Sikh population of Lahore had been estimated at 300,000. It was now, just four months later, barely 10,000.18 In Amrit
sar, on the Indian side of the border, a large group of Muslim women was stripped naked, paraded through the streets and raped by a Sikh mob. Some Sikhs were able to rescue a few of the women and hide them in the Golden Temple until the army could arrive. The rest of the women were burnt alive.19 Murders were running at several hundred a day, and a bonfire had been made of Muslim houses. The police on both sides either stood by or, in many cases, joined in. The phrase ‘a thousand times more horrible than anything I saw during the war’ became a cliché among British and Indian officers. One officer was confronted with the sight of four babies that had been roasted to death over a fire.20

  A strong desire for revenge following the massacres of Sikhs by Muslims in March meant that the Sikh campaign was being organized with striking efficiency, recruiting and mobilizing ex-servicemen and arming them from private stockpiles. Groups of anywhere between 20 and 5000 men (and sometimes women and children) would meet in gurdwaras and organize themselves into jathas, or fighting mobs, to raze Muslim villages. They were well armed with machine guns, rifles and shotguns, as well as grenades, spears, axes and kirpans, the ceremonial blade carried by all Sikhs.21 Usually, their Muslim adversaries only had staves. The pattern of attack was well established. When Muslim villagers saw a jatha coming, they would climb on to their roofs and beat gongs to alert neighbouring villages. The Sikhs would send in a first wave to shoot them off the roofs, a second wave to lob grenades over the walls, and a third wave to cut survivors to pieces with kirpans and spears. A fourth wave of older men would then go in and set light to the village, while outriders would ride around, swinging their kirpans to fell any escapees.