Partition, blow by blow

Book review of 'Partition: The Story of Indian Independence and the Creation of Partition in 1947'

PARTITION

The Story of Indian Independence and the Creation of Partition in 1947

Barney White-Spunner 

Simon & Schuster 

432 pages; Rs 699

Barney White-Spunner’s study on Partition may not satisfy professional historians or other scholars of modern Indian history because he presents this seminal tragedy from the viewpoint of his army background. He has chosen a month-by-month narrative of the events of 1947 (from January to December) set against the backdrop of 90 years of Indian history beginning with 1857 Revolt, the turmoil that haunted the sense of security among British rulers ever after. The author’s contention is that the events that led to Partition and its bloody aftermath sprang from this innate insecurity. 

The story of January 1947, the first month of a crucial year for decisions about India, shows that Viceroy Archibald Wavell was at odds with both the prime ministers he served, Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, on the process by which India could be granted Independence. The discussions took place just as “…the machinery of the Raj was falling apart,” according to Wavell. And “it had only ever been at best skin deep, … to maintain law and order when not challenged,” he added. 

The author agrees with Wavell, a former army commander, that the time had come for the British to withdraw because their capability to hold on to India and rule had disappeared. Instead of Wavell overseeing the process, Attlee appointed as Viceroy of India Louis Mountbatten, who took the oath on March 24, 1947 with the agenda of organising British withdrawal from its colony. 

The breakdown of law and order was also the product of the emergence of a more energetic nationalism after the Jallianwalla Bagh tragedy of 1919, even as communal tensions escalated. Growing hostility between the Congress and the Muslim League intensified with the short experiment of interim government of 1946, during which Jawaharlal Nehru was convinced that it was impossible to work with the Muslim League. The problem was becoming “intractable,” Mr White-Spunner writes. In the chapter on April, he says “it was Congress that insisted on Partition” whereas Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s line was “increasingly to push for a separate Partition… in the hope that the reality of this might bring Congress to compromise”. 

Mountbatten, who had to deal with the situation as it was developing in 1947, came to two conclusions: “First… that India was nearer to a complete breakdown of law and order than his masters in London appreciated. And second, …there was tension everywhere. There was no knowing when a new outbreak might start.” Mountbatten’s decisions, thus, were conditioned in the context of the escalating Hindu-Muslim tensions and the inability of the British security apparatus to control them. In the three chapters dealing with all the major events and negotiations between the three major participants – the British, the Congress and the Muslim League – Mountbatten concluded that the process needed to be accelerated. Power “should be transferred as soon as possible thereafter, so not in June 1948 as everyone has thought, nor in January 1948, not even in the autumn of 1947 but in two and a half months’ time, on 15 August”. 

The die was cast but all the intricate details for the establishment of the two Dominions of India and Pakistan as members of the British Commonwealth was done in a tearing hurry. A Boundary Commission for Punjab and Bengal was created under Sir Cyril Radcliffe, and the Partition Council had to deal with issues of paramountcy and princely states. On August 16, Radcliffe presented the findings of the Boundary Commission in three separate reports with maps; he left India on August 18. 

Predictions that the creation of two separate dominions on August 15, 1947, would settle the problem of India proved dead wrong. August 31, the author emphasises, was the “blackest day” in the history of the two countries. “From North, South, East and West came reports of attacks arson and abduction,” he writes in Chapter 9 aptly titled “A Heap of Ashes”.

On these events, the author’s conclusion is “it was not the rush that caused the slaughter; rather it was an inability of all the key players to foresee it. Nehru, Jinnah, Mountbatten… all failed India and those who were on a ‘civilising’ mission in India were part of the problem.”

Nehru and Jinnah had to deal with the huge problem of migration of “refugees” — Hindus from Pakistan and Muslims from India. Against the background of mass killings of migrating populations, Liaquat Ali met Nehru to negotiate for the safe transit of refugees. The tragic fact, however, was that neither dominion had the capability to arrange for an orderly transfer of populations. Widespread bloodshed was the inevitable result.  

The accession of the princely states was another element of Britain’s controversial exit from India, and, as with Partition, the consequences of that history remain with us today in the shape of Kashmir. Chapter 11 (covering November) provides an informative account of the way the rulers of Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir created difficulties for the new dominions. As is now well-established, the real source of trouble for Kashmir began with the Maharaja’s reluctance to sign the Instrument of Accession because he had dreams of independence for himself. It was only when so-called freelance raiders from Pakistan, known as Lashkar, attacked Kashmir that the Maharaja reluctantly signed the Instrument of Accession to India on October 26, after which India sent its army to deal with Lashkar invaders. While the war was being fought in the Kashmir, Mountbatten suggested that a “plebiscite should be organised under the aegis of the United Nations”. Jinnah insisted that both sides had to withdraw, without which the scope for any political solution was not in sight.

The soldier-author’s conclusion about Britain’s chaotic exit from in India captured the tragedy best: “We had stayed too long — just as we were doing in Basrah” [in Iraq].