Indicting Mountbatten

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr Delhi

American Stanley Wolpert has over the years established his credentials as a diligent historian of 20th century India. He came to India as a young man soon after 1947, and he does not seem to have tired of India. He continues to write engaging historical narratives, which can be read by the general reader with pleasure. So, his book on the Indian Partition should not come as a surprise. It has been timed well to coincide with the 60th anniversary of Indian Independence in 2007.

Wolpert's Indian peers and hack-reviewers might see Shameful Flight as yet another book on India's Partition, which does not really tap any significant new source as such. And he also confines himself to the main events and the main characters of the story of Partition and Transfer of Power. It is with a sense of irritation that historian Mushirul Hasan, while reviewing the book elsewhere, remarked that there is need to look at local sources to tell the story of the people who went through Partition trauma. Hasan has himself edited a book along with Alok Bhalla, a literature professor, of stories centred round Partition.

What might irk the scholar might prove to be a good read for the general reader. Wolpert has the general reader on his side. Even a story as familiar as that of Partition bears retelling, and there is a certain pleasure in rereading what we already know, with that small new detail which gives the pleasure of discovery to the reader.

Wolpert also carries his biases on his sleeve. It is quite clear right from the start of the book that he thinks Lord Mountbatten to be the villain of India's Partition, and that it was Mountbatten's ill-conceived and hasty withdrawal plan that led to the communal killings of thousands of people and the displacement of millions. He quotes Bengal's Secretary, John Dawson Tyson, writing a letter home on July 5, 1947: "Mountbatten is a hustler; ever since he came out he has pursued shock tactics…He has made his plan [and] soon after that the blitz began. And since the time when he launched his blitz he has given no one any rest – the Indian leaders least of all.   He has kept them so busy – so much on the run – that they have not had time to draw breath and criticism."

Citing an anguished letter that Nehru wrote to Mountbatten, Wolpert vents his anger at Nehru: "Having ignored the advice and warnings of Mahatma Gandhi, lured instead by the rose coloured promises of Lord and Lady Mountbatten, and half-blinded by the glitter of posh parties they hosted in Government House, Nehru rightly recognised now that he was as much to blame for what was happening in Punjab as was Mountbatten, perhaps because he understood so much more than the fast-moving viceroy."

He goes on to show that later in his life, Mountbatten had admitted that the quick withdrawal plan was indeed wrong, and he felt remorseful. When Mountbatten returned to England, a hero, a year after India's Independence, Anthony Eden threw a grand Tory party for him. Winston Churchill came, and when Mountbatten moved towards him, "Dickie, stand there!" shouted Churchill. Pointing a paralysing finger at his admiral's jacket, Churchill instantly brought the tall man to a halt: "What you did in India was like whipping your riding crop across my face!" The noisy room had fallen so silent that Chruchill's stentorian voice could be clearly heard by every ear in Westminster. The older man turned on his heel and strode out of the room, never speaking again to Mountbatten for seven years." Interestingly, the title of the book is a phrase from Churchill's speech opposing India's independence!

Wolpert seems to believe quite passionately that Partition could have been averted, and he sees the present-day South Asian discontents as a consequence of Partition in 1947. There will be many sentimentalists in India, Pakistan, and perhaps even in Bangladesh, who will agree with the American scholar. But a scrutiny of the half-century of pre-Independence Indian politics would convince any sober person that Partition was inevitable. It can certainly be argued that the bloodshed that accompanied could have been avoided, and a peaceful Partition was possible had Mountbatten not pursued his half-baked withdrawal plans. It has to be said that Wolpert does not play safe. He sticks his neck out, and makes judgments, which is in contrast to the Indian scholars who are inclined to be cautious.

What enlivens Wolpert's narrative is that he brings in telling descriptions of characters without being too deferential. His portrayal of the Cripps Mission is lively because he shows the quirks of Cripps, and of how his political colleagues treated him because of their own social and political biases. He writes: "Like Nehru, he (Cripps) was an ardent Socialist: and, like Gandhi, he was a strict vegetarian. Cripps seemed, therefore, the ideal cabinet minister to dispatch to India at this time of extreme danger and mounting anxiety over the possibility of a Japanese invasion." And Lord Linlithgow, the then viceroy, was the exact social and political opposite of Cripps: "Viceroy Linlithgow, graduate of Eton and an avid fox hunter, was as conservative an imperialist as Cripps was a radical Socialist."  Now this is the kind of pithy summing up of the characteristics of the major players that enlivens Wolpert's narrative. The style might verge on the flippant, but it is never dull.