Shameful Flight
By Dr Khan Dawood L.
Khan
Chicago, IL
Re: The Pakistan Link (14 July 2006) review of
Stanley Wolpert's soon-to-be-released book "Shameful
Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in
India"
[http://www.pakistanlink.com/hussaini.htm].
The title (“Shameful Flight”) recalls
Churchill’s famous rebuke for the undue
haste in which the British left the subcontinent.
In this book, Wolpert covers a traumatic period
(1942-1948), the beginning of the end of the British
empire.
Wolpert, a UCLA History Professor (Emeritus),
has written extensively on South Asian politics
and leaders. Comments from three of his previous
books (Jinnah of Pakistan, 1984; Gandhi’s
Passion’, 2001; A New History of India,
7th ed., 2004) were included in my own five-part
article (‘Partition Players’ Politics’)
published in Pakistan Link last year [from 9 September,
2005 http://www.pakistanlink.com/Opinion/2005/Sep05/09/02.HTM
to 14 October, 2005:
http://www.pakistanlink.com/Opinion/2005/Oct05/14/03.HTM
].
As detailed in my article, Wolpert is not the
only person to hold Mountbatten responsible for
the horrific aftermath of the partition; in his
‘unseemly haste’, Mountbatten not
only dismissed the concerns (from his own staff
and other British experts far more knowledgeable
than him about Indian communal tensions and politics)
and failed to take any measures for the consequences
of his actions, but also failed to achieve a key
component of his mandate from Clement Attlee,
then British Prime Minister: a military alliance
with India and Pakistan! This is from the last
part of my article (14 October 2005; link above):
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.
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