The alleged misdemeanours of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala were recorded in the bestseller Maharaja by Dewan Jermani Dass (Allied, New Delhi, 1970). His grandson, Captain Amrinder Singh, in 2002, became the popular chief minister of the most prosperous state of India, Punjab. In the wars fought by India, in 1965 and 1971, there were sons of two former rulers in the Indian Army: Colonel Bhawani Singh of Jaipur and Brigadier Sukhjeet Singh of Kapurthala. Both were awarded Mahavir Chakras for valour in action.
Travancore (in the present-day Kerala state) on the southwestern coast of India had declared its intention to become independent before the meeting of the Chamber of Princes on 25 July 1947. As mentioned earlier, Travancore had thorium deposits, which could be utilized for producing nuclear energy. Travancore was the first place anywhere in India to introduce universal primary education and had, as far back as 1930, opened temples to the untouchables. Travancore was also the first to start the manufacture of aluminium and the building of sea vessels. Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer, the all-powerful prime minister of the state, felt Travancore was so much more advanced than other areas of India – both British and princely – that joining the rest would set it back. Loyal to his king, he also feared accession might prove to be the thin end of the wedge for the maharaja’s elimination. Travancore had entered into negotiations with a British company to exploit its thorium deposits and tried to contact the American consul in Madras to explore US recognition for its independence. As stated earlier, the US secretary of state forbade the US consul to establish any contact with the state. This step no doubt dampened the enthusiasm of those in England who hoped that Travancore might emerge as a dominion in its own right.
Mountbatten had to adopt a firmer line to discipline Ramaswami Iyer. The viceroy reported: ‘He, Sir C.P., sought to prove that Mahatma Gandhi...was a most dangerous semi-repressed sex maniac…and that if he insisted on backing the unstable Nehru against the realistic Patel it would break up the Congress Party within two years...and said he was not prepared to ally himself with so unreliable a dominion.’39 Admittedly, his sentiments were more like those of a repressed opposition leader in the country rather than those of a traitor. ‘When arguments did not seem to work I told him’, says Mountbatten, ‘that it was reported that Seth [R.K.] Dalmia (the richest industrialist in India at that time and a supporter of the Congress Party) had that morning paid Rs 5 lakh into the Travancore Congress Party funds in anticipation of starting internal trouble in the State after 15th August.’40 The viceroy subsequently reported: ‘Shortly after his return to his State (from Delhi) at the end of July he (Sir C.P.) was assaulted with a bill-hook and very nearly killed. The State Peoples’ Organization turned the heat full on and Travancore immediately gave in. The Maharaja telegraphed his acceptance of the Instrument of Accession to me personally and Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer’s friends asked Sardar Patel to call off the State Peoples’ movement.’41
Travancore’s collapse persuaded those princes who had by then not made up their minds to accede to the future Indian dominion. This development enabled Mountbatten to present the ‘full basket’ he had promised Patel – except, of course, for Hyderabad, Junagadh and Kashmir. The last mentioned, London expected to join Pakistan. And the same Mountbatten, who had so assiduously worked to attach the princely states to India, frustrated Indian efforts to absorb Kashmir into India. How all this happened is the subject of the next chapter.
Before an Indian sunset there is often a glow that bathes the landscape in a mellow light. Princely India experienced such a radiance, before darkness descended upon it. Mountbatten’s biographer, with typical economy, describes this spectacle: ‘It was to be almost the last fine flourish of princely India; processions of pompous elephants; palatial splendour; the traditional diversions of the rulers – tiger shooting in Gwalior; fishing in Mysore; and celebrated grouse of Bikaner. Nor were humbler pursuits despised; at Ootacamund: “Golf course lovely. They cut a tree down to make it easier for me.” It was a world which he had helped to destroy; but the inevitability of its passing made its attractions no less seductive.’42
The Mountbattens visited the Maratha princes of Baroda and Gwalior; Mysore; Travancore and Cochin; Kapurthala, the Sikh State (where the old maharaja asked the guests to raise a toast to Lord and Lady Willingdon); Bhopal, who had opposed him; and Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Bikaner and Bundi in Rajputana. At the last place, young Maharaja Bahadur Singh performed the ‘tiger trick’. His Excellency bagged a tiger literally between gimlets and luncheon – ten minutes’ drive to the machan, five minutes on it and five minutes for the inevitable photograph with the dead beast at the shikari’s feet. I can vouchsafe the Bundi ‘tiger trick’ having been in attendance as ADC.
No rancour was noticeable during the viceregal tour about the events of July and August 1947. Did this tour help to smoothen the princes’s path to oblivion? One prince was heard to say three months after independence: ‘What nonsense the British are going. The Viceroy was at the annual Bikaner shoot.’
Fraternizing with Indians had stopped after the Great Mutiny of 1857. Social intercourse, except with the princely order and some selected Indians, did not exist, even between British and Indian officers in the Army. Indians were unwelcome in train compartments occupied by Britishers even when they held valid tickets. British clubs excluded Indians. Indians dismounted from their ponies or other conveyances to salute the ‘Sahib’ if they happened to cross one on the road. That Harcourt Butler, the governor of the United Provinces, sent a bottle of champagne to the jail cell of Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal’s father, on his first night in prison for participating in Gandhiji’s civil disobedience, in remembrance of the many drinks they had together, was an exception that proved the rule.
There were many causes for this attitude, by all accounts very strong till the Second World War. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the struggle had been between the British and Indian forces of not dissimilar strength, and equality in battle breeds mutual respect, even fraternity. By the nineteenth century, one side had achieved absolute ascendancy in industry, science, arms and organization, and the Indians were pushed into an inferior position. Weakness is what weakness does. The impression of India as a rich country with an ancient civilization that had remained fixed in the European mind for so long was destroyed, and with it respect for India and Indians. Further, the onerous challenges of a worldwide empire required British belief in their own superiority and pre-eminence. This resulted in slogans like the ‘white man’s burden’. Christian missionaries who entered India in the nineteenth century were sustained by donors back home and it was only natural for them to project the worst possible picture of those to be redeemed, so as to obtain funds. And sex, the great equalizer, lost its humanizing influence, as faster ships made it possible to bring out British wives to India.* To protect them too the race card had to be played to the full.**
The Mountbattens made it a rule that no less than 50 per cent of those invited to their garden parties, lunches and dinners should be Indians, when until then few, if any, Indians had been invited to such functions. He took an Indian aide-de-camp – the first ever appointed. ‘These measures were not popular among certain class of Europeans’, he reported. ‘This was made clear when my younger daughter (Lady Pamela) standing near two English ladies to whom she had not been introduced, heard one say to the other: “It makes me sick to see this house full of dirty Indians.”’43
In 1947, 50 per cent of the senior civil services, 60 per cent of police officers, and all posts above lieutenant colonel in the Army, were held by Britishers (K.M. Cariappa was made brigadier, the first Indian to reach that rank, that year). The Indian National Congress Party, having taken the lead against British rule, was seen by them as an enemy and the Muslim League and Pakistan a friend. At the bottom was the frustration at losing the most precious jewel of the Empire as well as their employment, security, good salaries and status. Some of the British anger also got rubbed off on Mountbatten. ‘He lost I
ndia of course’, was the common refrain heard against him in Britain from Brighton to Newscastle.
…to identify him [Mountbatten] with the British Government or with the British people generally is entirely wrong. I know that the great body of British opinion, both official and non-official shares our view of Mountbatten…he has definitely sided with India (against Pakistan)…
wrote Sir Francis Mudie to a friend in Lucknow soon after independence. Mudie had been home secretary in the Government of India and then governor of Sind before independence. He opted for service in Pakistan. He went on:
The facts of the situation are that Pakistan is situated between hostile – a very hostile – India on the one side and…an expansionist and unscrupulous Russia [on the other]. As long as the relations between Pakistan and Britain are good and Pakistan remains in the Commonwealth an attack by Russia – and also I am inclined to believe an attack by India – on Pakistan brings in the UK and the USA on Pakistan’s side. If these conditions do not hold then Pakistan stands alone and sooner or later will be swallowed by India or more probably partitioned as Poland was. I can assure you that the feeling in Britain is strongly pro-Pakistan, whatever Mountbatten and Cripps may do, and that it is growing so. I know this from the letters I receive from home.45
The views of British officers in the Army were reported by Sir Arthur Smith, the deputy C-in-C and the chief of the General Staff of the Indian Army in his periodical top-secret and personal report for August 1947 to the chiefs of staff in London as follows:
I will try and summarize what I believe to be the views of thinking senior officers here…. Events of the last two months have shown clearly that Congress (the Hindu) cannot be trusted. Congress have [sic] proved themselves dishonest, corrupt, conceited, inefficient and without any decent morals…. You can appreciate that it is not easy to keep the balance and be impartial. I suppose nearly every British officer who has opted to stay on would prefer to go to Pakistan than the new India…I fear that India will get more and more inefficient and become a second Persia…. Their only hope is a change of outlook but there is no sign of such anyhow at present.
One more example of the Hindu outlook. Pakistan wanted General [Walter Joseph] Cawthorn [who was serving with the Pakistani Army] to help their delegation at the forthcoming Canberra conference on the Japanese Peace Treaty, India refused…to show the world their self-sufficiency and independence, and so they are sending an Indian Brigadier from Japan.46
No wonder then, that so many British officers, military and civilian, who opted to serve in Pakistan, did their utmost to help that country against India on the problems left unresolved at independence, the most important of them being the question of the affiliation of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.
In splitting the Indian Army, Mountbatten had to ignore the view of his commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Auchinleck, who had throughout held the view that it would be more difficult to influence Indian defence policy once the Army was divided and joint British Command over it removed. But he had no answer to the old questions: How could the Indian Army help Britain if Indian leaders would withhold from cooperating? And how could Pakistan help Britain in the Great Game unless it had its own independent force?
The date for the withdrawal of the British forces proved a contentious issue. Auchinleck opposed early withdrawal, whereas Mountbatten argued that if these forces were retained, it would be ‘tantamount to an admission that we did not trust them (the new Dominions)’.47 Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery visited India at this time and Mountbatten used him to make Auchinleck accept the inevitable. Philip Ziegler writes: ‘The Viceregal servants wore Mountbatten’s personal insignia “M of B” (Mountbatten of Burma) set within the Garter. For Montgomery of Alamein also Member of the Order of the Garter, “B” on the guests’ servants’ uniforms was changed to “A”. Montgomery of Alamein was delighted. “M of B” then persuaded “M of A” to make Auchinleck accept the splitting of the Indian Army. Not only was the Army divided within two months but [also] British forces were ordered to evacuate as soon as transport was available. “Magnificent”, wired Cripps to Mountbatten, “we have been thinking of you hour by hour”.’48
V.P. Menon’s counsel came to Lord Mountbatten’s aid once again at the time of independence. And it was this counsel, Mountbatten told me, that made possible the joyous and tumultuous celebrations of Independence Day in India ‘that helped so much to bury past Indian animosity to Britain’. The Boundary Commission under Justice Lord Cyril Radcliffe of England was to pronounce its award before 15 August 1947. Menon’s counsel was simple: Postpone the announcement of this award till after independence. The award was bound to fall short of the expectations of one or other side or both, said V.P., and create explosive frustrations within the two countries as well as suspicion of British intentions, which would mar the celebrations. The excuse then contrived for delaying the announcement of the verdict was to put it in a safe on receipt and to say that it was received from Lord Radcliffe on 13 August, after the viceroy had left for Karachi to take part in the Pakistan Independence Day celebrations there on 14 August.
The emotional celebrations in the streets of Delhi, with Lord and Lady Mountbatten joining the crowds, added enormously to British prestige in the world. That night, 10,000 invitees participated in the reception in the Mughal Gardens in the former Viceroy’s House. Shanker Pillai, the cartoonist, captured the atmosphere of the changed era in a cartoon with the caption: ‘Water flowed like champagne at Government House.’ Free India had imposed prohibition at official receptions. It is another matter that Indians and Pakistanis celebrated their independence not knowing where exactly their boundaries would be: the Punjab holocaust had begun and the war in Kashmir that renewed Indo–British differences was a couple of months away.
Notes and References
1. Report on ‘The Last Viceroyalty’, March–August 1947, Part C, Paras 78–79 (OIC, British Library, London).
2. TOP X, S. No. 512 (L/P&J/5/224 F 45).
3. Report on ‘The Last Viceroyalty’, Part C, Para 87 (OIC, British Library, London).
4. S. Gopal, Nehru (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2003, p. 357).
5. Report on ‘The Last Viceroyalty’, Part D, Para 60 (OIC, British Library, London).
6. Ibid., Para 71.
7. TOP XII, S. No. 394.
8. TOP X, S. No. 512 (L/P&J/5/224 F 45).
9. Humayun Mirza, From Plassey to Pakistan (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Oxford, UK, 1999, pp. 151–52).
10. Report on ‘The Last Viceroyalty’, Part C, Para 61 (OIC, British Library, London).
11. Ibid., Para 28.
12. Ibid., Paras 105–06.
13. V. P. Menon, Transfer of Power in India (Longman Green, London, 1957, p. 382).
14. Ibid., p. 386.
15. Ibid., p. 386.
16. Note by McGhee, State Department Paper 611, 91/11–350, 3 November 1950.
17. Ibid.
18. FO, File No. 6567, 31 June 1947, telegram from the ambassador, Sir M. Patterson.
19. FO, File No. 905, pp. 4189 ff.
20. Ibid.
21. US FR 1947, Vol. III, pp. 154–55.
22. Ibid., pp. 160–61.
23. Ibid., pp. 156–57.
24. Ibid., pp. 162–63.
25. Ibid., pp. 177–78.
26. Wylie to Lothian, Letter No. F 148, p. 143, Para 3, 30 November 1943.
27. TOP IX, S. No. 543.
28. Report on ‘The Last Viceroyalty’, Part E, Para 68 (OIC, British Library, London).
29. Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten (Collins, London, 1985, p. 405).
30. Report on ‘The Last Viceroyalty’, Part E, Para 69 (OIC, British Library, London).
31. Alan Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten (New Age Publishers, Delhi, 1994, diary entry dated 25 July 1947, p. 142).
32. Report on ‘The Last Viceroyalty’, Part F, Para 12 (OIC, British Library, London).
33. Ibid., Para 36.
&n
bsp; 34. Ibid., Para 33.
35. Ibid., Para 36.
36. Ibid., Paras 16–24.
37. Ibid., Para 37.
38. Ibid., Paras 25–27.
39. Ibid., Part E, Para 73.
40. Ibid., Para 75.
41. Ibid., Para 13.
42. Ziegler, op. cit., p. 459.
43. Report on ‘The Last Viceroyalty’, Part A, Para 112 (OIC, British Library, London).
44. Sir Penderel Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, Vol. 2 (India Research Press, Delhi, 1999, p. 1187).
45. See Khaliq-uz-Zaman, Pathway to Pakistan (Longman Green, London, 1961, p. 392).
46. File L/WS/1/1107, IOR, London, dated 12 August 1947, pp. 242–44.
47. Report on ‘The Last Viceroyalty’, Part D, Para 99 (OIC, British Library, London).
48. Ziegler, op. cit., p. 391.
* Sir Olaf Caroe, while reviewing H.V. Hodson’s book The Great Divide in the 1960s, says: ‘The fate of the 3 June “Menon” Partition plan hung on a resolution of the North-West Frontier problem. So long as the Khan Brothers (owing allegiance to the Congress Party) ruled the frontier, Jinnah could not claim leadership of Muslim India, and it was impossible for even a moth-eaten Pakistan to emerge. It followed that all Congress efforts were to preserve, and all League efforts to upset, the Khan Brothers in Peshawar’ (offprint available in the Caroe papers IORL, MSS Eur F 203/1).
* This figure does not include the 200-odd states controlling a village or two, which, through a quirk of history, in Kathiawad (Gujarat) were left out from absorption in the British provinces or other states.
* The chamber comprised 108 rulers who were members in their own right plus twelve additional members elected by the rulers of the smaller stares. The Nizam of Hyderabad and the Maharaja of Mysore stood aloof from this chamber.
The Shadow of the Great Game Page 35
