The Sunday Tribune

The last Viceroy’s revelations
R.L. Singal

Mountbatten’s Report on the Last Viceroyalty
edited by Lionel Carter. Manohar. Rs 850. Pages 398.

Lord Mountbatten and his wife, Lady Edwina Mountbatten, meet Mahatma Gandhi at their house (now Rashtrapati Bhavan) in New Delhi in 1947.

THE book covers the period of Lord Mountbatten’s viceroyalty in India from March 22 to August 15, 1947. During these hectic days of his negotiations with Indian leaders, particularly of the Congress and the Muslim League, he sent to Prime Minister Attlee 17 weekly reports as desired by the latter. These form a full week-to-week record of events during his viceroyalty and show fully on what grounds the various decisions, which had to be made, were based. Though Attlee had announced in the House of Commons on February 20, 1947, that the British would quit India by a date not later than June, 1948. Mountbatten, instead of waiting for the turbulent and violent communal situation in India to calm down and trying to evolve an acceptable formula for an independent united India, hastened matters, resulting in the country’s Partition, ten months before the date fixed by the British to quit.

Lord Mountbatten held prolonged parleys with Indian leaders, particularly with Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel of the Congress and Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Liaqat Ali Khan of the Muslim League. On the very first day of his arrival, Mountbatten wrote to Mahatma Gandhi and Jinnah, asking them to come and see him in Delhi. The first to answer was Gandhi, saying: "I dare not resist your kind call." When they met, Mountbatten was immensely impressed by Mahatma’s humility, amiability and spirit of accommodation.

In Mountbatten’s words: "Mahatma Gandhi gave me the brief summary of the solution which he wished me to adopt. The basis of this was that Mr Jinnah should be invited to form a new interim government; and that I should eventually hand over power to this`85 the plan left the selection of the new Cabinet entirely to Mr Jinnah, who could either have the Muslim League representatives only, or, if he felt so, Pandit Nehru and other Congress leaders, and representatives of other minorities; the Congress party, with their majority in the Legislative Assembly, was to guarantee to cooperate fairly and sincerely in all measures that the new Cabinet brought forward and were in the interests of the Indian people as a whole; I was to be the sole referee of what was in these interests."

Mountbatten, who met Jinnah for the first time on April 5, was disheartened by his total lack of trust and warmth. "In complete contrast to Mahatma Gandhi’s charm and friendliness, Jinnah was, when he arrived, in a most frigid, haughty and disdainful frame of mind," bemoans Mountbatten. He tried to reason with him on the desirability of maintaining the unity of India, on the baneful consequences of Partition and on the need for giving the Cabinet Mission Plan (evolved earlier and initially accepted by both the Congress and the Muslim League) a fair trial. He also apprised him of the offer made by Mahatma Gandhi, but these statements and persuasions of Mountbatten had no effect on Jinnah. He had made up his mind not to accept anything short of an independent sovereign state of Pakistan. Mountbatten has summed up his assessment of the intentions of Jinnah as also the impasse he had created in the following words: "By the time that this series of interviews was at an end, it was clear that, if any attempt was made to impose the Cabinet Mission’s Plan, or any other plan designed to maintain the unity of India, on the Muslim League, they would resort to armed force to resist it. But when I asked Mr Jinnah for his ideas on how his Pakistan would be set up, he was not very helpful. ‘You must carry out a surgical operation, ’ he said, ‘cut India and its Army firmly in half and give me the half that belongs to the Muslim League.’"

Mountbatten met almost every important politician in India and gauged their opinions with his sharp mind. Not a single politician of any hue, except those of the Muslim League, supported Partition. Jinnah’s deputy Liaqat Ali Khan went so far in his fanaticism as to say: "If you are only prepared to let us have the Sind Desert, I would prefer that to continuing in bondage to the Congress (page 69)."

On finding the Muslim League leaders so adamant on Partition, Mountbatten told them that the principle of Partition, if applied to India as a whole, would certainly also have to be applied to Bengal and the Punjab which had clearly defined areas with non-Muslim majorities. Jinnah reacted to this proposition by dwelling on the common cultural and linguistic ties among the Hindus and Muslims of these provinces.

Mountbatten used these very arguments of Jinnah against him by talking of the tragedy of breaking up India, where the people surely could live together as one nation in peace and harmony. It was this incontrovertible argument that ultimately led Jinnah to accept the partition of Bengal and the Punjab as a precondition for the Partition of India.

Under his Conclusions, Lord Mountbatten has tried to justify his preponing the date of British withdrawal from India by claiming that the decision of the major political parties in India to implement the June 3 Plan represented their first agreement on the method of taking over power. In the circumstances, speed seemed essential; delay might have plunged the whole subcontinent into disruption and chaos.