Partition
Players’ Politics: V
By Dr. Khan Dawood
L. Khan
Chicago, IL
Having
discussed other players in Parts I–IV, I
now focus a bit more on the British and on the
US role which has largely been minor and not as
well known.
The British: Churchill/ Attlee/ Mountbatten
Long before any organized movement for independence,
the British motto (‘divide-and-rule’)
had already been in operation. In 1888, or a mere
three years after the formation of the Congress
party, as an organ for an Indian point of view
on Britain’s governance, the founder of
the party denounced “the British attempts
to promote Hindu-Muslim division by fostering
‘the devil’s … dismal doctrine
of discord and disunion’.” The Congress
party-founder was not an Indian but a liberal
Scot, named Allan Octavian Hume.
Churchill hated India [“I hate Indians.
They are a beastly people with a beastly religion”].
Wavell, the immediate predecessor of Mountbatten,
also noted the same about Churchill and added
that “[Churchill] knew as much of the Indian
problem as George III did of American colonies”
[in 1776, before US Declaration of Independence;
George III was the British monarch then].
Most of Churchill’s venom was, however,
reserved particularly for Gandhi and he used it
liberally and often. Among his many personally
vicious comments on Gandhi, Churchill had this
to say in Parliament [when Gandhi arrived in Delhi
to meet Irwin in 1931] : “It is alarming
and nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious
Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of
a type well known in the East, striding half-naked
up the steps of the Viceregal palace, while he
is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign
of civil disobedience, to parley in equal terms
with the representatives of the king Emperor.”
In 1943, Churchill, after seeing Roosevelt off,
said to Kenneth Pender, US vice-consul to Marrakech:
“Now Pender, why don’t you give us
Morocco, and we shall give you India. We shall
even give you Gandhi, and he’s awfully cheap
to keep, now that he’s on a hunger strike
… There are always earnest spinsters in
Pennsylvania, Utah, Edinburgh or Dublin, persistently
writing letters and signing petitions and ardently
giving advice to the British government, urging
that India be given back to Indians, and South
Africa back to the Zulus or Boer, but as long
as I am called by His Majesty the King to be his
First Minister, I shall not assist at the dismemberment
of the British Empire.”
Lord Wavell records Churchill’s response
of 5 July 1944 to Wavell’s telegram for
aid to the starving in Bengal: “Winston
sent me a peevish telegram to ask why Gandhi hadn’t
died yet! He has never answered my [Wavell’s]
telegram about food.” When Wavell met Churchill,
as the WWII was winding down, he records this
in his journal (29 March 1945): “The PM
then launched into a long jeremiad about India
which lasted for 40 minutes. He seems to favor
partition into Pakistan, Hindustan, Princestan,
etc.” In this, Jinnah and Churchill thought
alike.
Ayesha Jalal in her 1985 book ‘The Sole
Spokesman,’ says that two years before partition,
Andrew Clow admitted that it was the British who
had contributed to make Pakistan a live issue.”
In 1945, William Phillips, a representative of
the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) urged
the US State department to publicly support the
Britian-Congress-League settlement. When the US
Secrtary of State, Edward Stettinius, urged Churchill’s
Foreign Minsiter Anthony Eden (later a PM himself)
how granting India its independence would improve
the Allied prestige in the Far East, Eden “doubted
that India’s problems can be resolved as
long as Gandhi was alive,” according to
Kux.
In the first post-WWII British general elections
(1945), Churchill who had successfully fought
Hitler, was defeated by the Labor Party by a huge
margin. Clement Attlee, a Labor party leader and
a liberal and a socialist, who in 1940, joined
the coalition war-time cabinet/government headed
by Churchill during the war, was the one who defeated
Churchill. For the next six years, he was vigorous
in carrying out reforms, nationalization many
service (and introduced National Health Service)
and granted freedom to India and Burma, to which
he and the Labor had long been committed. A person
who was “admired” even by as staunch
a conservative as Maragret Thatcher - “he
was all substance and no show,” in her book
‘The Path f Power,’ 1995.
Prime Minister Attlee’s mandate of February
1947 to Viceroy Mountbatten was to secure a peaceful
‘transfer of power’ (a British preference
for ‘independence’) “the closest
and most friendly relations between India and
the UK. A feature of this relationship should
be a military treaty.” But, in what has
been described as his ‘unseemly haste’,
Mountbatten failed to achieve one of the key components
of this mandate: a military alliance with either
India or Pakistan (only Ceylon/Sri Lanka agreed
to have British bases). However, these countries
agreed to remain within the Commonwealth. Loss
of India was a major blow to the British Empire
and its position as a world power (Among those
who commented on India being the key to the British
empire’s power, Lord Curzon: “Take
away India, and Britain would become a second-rate
power.”).
Lawrence James thinks the post-partition massacre
could have been avoided. Mountbatten’s reactions
to the bloody aftermath of partition were, according
to his biographer, Philip Ziegler, “at his
most shallow.” Mountbatten claimed later
he tried “to minimize the scale of the disaster”
and that it “had surprised him [Mountbatten].”
But Ziegler, reminding the escalation of violence
since August 1946 states, “Military intelligence
knew that it could worsen. Aware of this, [Field
Marshall] Auchinlek [Commander in Chief in India]
had wanted to keep British troops behind after
Independence, but had been over-ridden by Mountbatten.”
In the same biography, Ziegler also says: “Senior
military men in India, including Auchinlek, were
critical of Mountbatten, whose Toad-of-Toad Hall
exhibitionism irritated a caste which traditionally
prized reticence and self-effacement. Lieutenant
General Sir Reginald Savory, Adjutant-General
of the Indian Army, accused him of having “tried
to make it appear to India and the world and to
ourselves that we were committing a noble deed.”
The Oxford History of British Empire (Judith M.
Brown And Wm. Roger Louis, eds.) is also quite
critical of Mountbatten: His main motive seems
to be “expediency and the urge to further
his reputation,” and refers to his “megalomania,
his self-serving accounts and his doctoring of
historical records” as part of the premise.
US
Till 1941, US presence in India (then a British
colony) was very limited, and that business was
conducted through Britain (between US-British
embassies), and the official US presence in India
was restricted to consular offices in a few cities
(Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Karachi), with no
diplomatic presence in the Indian capital, New
Delhi. However, concerned over military expansionism
from Japan in WWII, the US opened its diplomatic
relations with India just a month before Pearl
Harbor (November, 1941). When, after taking over
Malaya and Burma, Japan was threatening India,
FDR sent his personal envoy Louis Johnson in April
1942 to help in Britain’s problems in India.
Churchill (then British PM) had offered limited
encouragement to Congress but refused ‘transfer
of power’ to India during WWII. Though the
Muslim League was supportive of the Allied war
effort, Congress was NOT. Congress did not support
the British plan either (presented by Sir Stafford
Cripps). FDR blamed the failure of the Cripps
Mission on “the British unwillingness to
concede to the Indians the right of self–government”
(in a cable to Churchill, 11 April 1942), but
FDR couldn’t press Churchill anymore. India’s
partition “sounded terrible” to FDR.
Even after Independence, the State Department
was not warm towards Pakistan.
Outside India, the press was generally wary. In
a series of articles, in the New York Times (1942–1943),
Herbert Matthews described the growing role of
Jinnah/Muslim League: In “Jinnah Holds the
Key to Peace in India” ( 4 October, 1942),
he wrote “… a new figure has arisen
and he holds in his hands more power for good
or evil than any single politician. It’s
that tall, thin, exasperatingly deliberate man
who seems to be taking pleasure at keeping the
world guessing –--Mohamed Ali Jinnah. In
his delicate hands lies the answer to the riddle:
‘Can Hindus and Muslim Agree?”
“Time” magazine was particularly harsh
on Jinnah: The 22 April 1946 cover story showing
a grim Jinnah with the caption “His Muslim
Tiger Wants to eat the Hindu Cow,” commented
that “the Indian sun casts Jinnah’s
long thin shadow not only across the negotiations
in Delhi but over India’s future.”
It’s not probably well-known but Kux says
in his book, the US had about 350,000 troops stationed
in India during WWII, supposedly as ‘quartermasters
and engineers’ in Bengal and Assam, fearing
a Japanese attack. They were politically neutral
and took no sides in the India-Pakistan debate.
The US was more concerned about Britain granting
independence to India, rather than India after
independence.
Selected References
1. Stanley Wolpert; Jinnah of Pakistan, 1984;
Gandhi’s Passion’, 2001; A New History
of India, 7th ed., 2004
2. Yogesh Chadha. Gandhi: A Life. 1997
3. Lawrence James: Raj: The Making and Unmaking
of British India. 1997
4. Karl E. Meyer. The Dist of Empire. 2004
5. Rajmohan Gandhi. “The Good Boatman. A
Portrait of Gandhi.” 1995
6. Louis Fischer. Gandhi: His Life and Message
for the World. 1954
7. John Keay. India: a History, 2000
8. Sunil Khilnani. The Idea of India. 1998
9. William Manchester. Winston Churchill: The
Last Lion (1874-1932).
10. Dennis Kux. The United States and Pakistan
(1947-2000): Disenchanted Allies. 2001
11. P. Ziegler. Mountbatten. 1985
12. V. S. Naipaul: India, a Wounded Civilization.
1976
13. Ayesha Jalal. The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah,
The Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan.
1985
14. The Oxford History of The British Empire:
The 20th Century [Judith M. Brown & William
Roger Louis, Eds.]
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