Shameful Flight
Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India
“Would it not be a world crime…that would stain…our good name for ever?” Churchill asked, in response to Mountbatten’s monstrously stupid “plan” to execute the shameful flight that this book is titled after. I found this (p. 132 of the 2006 edition), a most interesting question.
Cut to about 2011. In a group of Indians, we had a Harvard graduate (b.t.w. it could have been any university) going on about what a terrible thing the Holocaust was. I replied that it’s interesting that the Holocaust is remembered as a tragedy for humankind, but the deaths of almost as many Indians (in the absence of lists, the Indian numbers are not really known) between the Bengal famine and the Partition of India are somehow “less” tragic in the world’s eyes. The lady thought about it for a minute, then said that the Holocaust was different because the victims were gassed to death. (Before I am accused of being a holocaust denier, let me swear that I am not.)
It is an astounding fact that the world crime that Mountbatten and the Empire’s officials perpetrated, and the Indian/Pakistani leaders abetted, has not stained their name for ever. Today, the sun never sets on the Empire’s boot-lickers. In the popular narrative, the Raj unified India for the first time, and the Indian freedom movement won over the Raj with non-violence, which would not have worked with any other colonial power. Who was responsible for the horror of partition? We don’t know, and we don’t care all that much.
Shameful Flight , like any other work that deals with a genocide, is not easy reading, but it is essential reading for those (like me) who have formed some opinions earlier by watching Gandhi and reading Freedom at Midnight. Wolpert pretty much lays out his conclusion by the second page of the introduction, with Mountbatten’s own admission of guilt to a BBC correspondent. Of course, he does much more than that, with his meeting-by-meeting description of how a partition that was a bargaining chip turned into a bloody reality. The author’s use of research to put together a story accessible to the average reader is very impressive. Almost every sentence has a phrase in quotes, with an end-note, but the text remains very readable.
From a general reader’s perspective, I thought the shortcomings to this work become more obvious when you ask if it tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Now of course there is no such thing, but the question is if it comes close.
On the subject of Mountbatten, I did not read anything about him falsifying his war record, and perhaps not being the great hero that he successfully made himself out to be. Most importantly, his record in (read here and here) dodging responsibility for the Dieppe disaster seems very relevant to this book.
Then there is the subject of “Netaji”, Subhash Chandra Bose. He is always a controversial figure, but he was, perhaps, more than “Japan’s puppet leader” as Wolpert describes him. Or if the description is right, I would conclude that de Gaulle was the Brit’s puppet leader. There are books on Bose that helped me understand him better: Peter Ward Fay, Leonard Gordon and Hugh Toye have written books published decades ago, and the first two were professional historians. Toye was a British Intelligence officer and his account is quite sympathetic to Bose. Gordon spoke to Japanese officers who saw a Samurai spirit in Bose.
The launching of the Jihad in Kashmir, and the events leading to and after it, are covered with more relevant detail in Nisid Hajari’s Mignight’s Furies.
Finally, there is evidence dating back to 1976 that Atlee’s government was motivated mainly by the INA trials and the 1946 naval mutiny in deciding to leave India. Atlee’s comment that the Quit India movement and the Congress had a “minimal” impact on the decision should at least get a small section in any account on independence.
So, in spite of the author’s credentials, there are some holes in the narrative, which is perhaps not such a surprise given the complexity of the topic.
The biggest gap, however, comes from not raising the right questions. Why did Mountbatten and the others who were responsible for an unnecessary partition do what they did? Why was the date for independence advanced? This is where fiction proves itself superior to history. In his haunting work Kitne Pakistan (literally “How Many Pakistans?”, but the English translation is called Partitions ), the Hindi novelist Kamleshwar notes (as Wolpert also does) that Jinnah was the only Muslim leader who could have made Pakistan happen. But he goes further, and asks the question: what were the chances that British Intelligence did not know Jinnah was terminally ill?
It is easy to be a critic and go on about shortcomings. The positives remain what they are: this is a great work that at least urges us to stop pretending that the “world crime” of Partition happened without any criminal intent.
“Would it not be a world crime…that would stain…our good name for ever?” Churchill asked, in response to Mountbatten’s monstrously stupid “plan” to execute the shameful flight that this book is titled after. I found this (p. 132 of the 2006 edition), a most interesting question.
Cut to about 2011. In a group of Indians, we had a Harvard graduate (b.t.w. it could have been any university) going on about what a terrible thing the Holocaust was. I replied that it’s interesting that the Holocaust is remembered as a tragedy for humankind, but the deaths of almost as many Indians (in the absence of lists, the Indian numbers are not really known) between the Bengal famine and the Partition of India are somehow “less” tragic in the world’s eyes. The lady thought about it for a minute, then said that the Holocaust was different because the victims were gassed to death. (Before I am accused of being a holocaust denier, let me swear that I am not.)
It is an astounding fact that the world crime that Mountbatten and the Empire’s officials perpetrated, and the Indian/Pakistani leaders abetted, has not stained their name for ever. Today, the sun never sets on the Empire’s boot-lickers. In the popular narrative, the Raj unified India for the first time, and the Indian freedom movement won over the Raj with non-violence, which would not have worked with any other colonial power. Who was responsible for the horror of partition? We don’t know, and we don’t care all that much.
Shameful Flight , like any other work that deals with a genocide, is not easy reading, but it is essential reading for those (like me) who have formed some opinions earlier by watching Gandhi and reading Freedom at Midnight. Wolpert pretty much lays out his conclusion by the second page of the introduction, with Mountbatten’s own admission of guilt to a BBC correspondent. Of course, he does much more than that, with his meeting-by-meeting description of how a partition that was a bargaining chip turned into a bloody reality. The author’s use of research to put together a story accessible to the average reader is very impressive. Almost every sentence has a phrase in quotes, with an end-note, but the text remains very readable.
From a general reader’s perspective, I thought the shortcomings to this work become more obvious when you ask if it tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Now of course there is no such thing, but the question is if it comes close.
On the subject of Mountbatten, I did not read anything about him falsifying his war record, and perhaps not being the great hero that he successfully made himself out to be. Most importantly, his record in (read here and here) dodging responsibility for the Dieppe disaster seems very relevant to this book.
Then there is the subject of “Netaji”, Subhash Chandra Bose. He is always a controversial figure, but he was, perhaps, more than “Japan’s puppet leader” as Wolpert describes him. Or if the description is right, I would conclude that de Gaulle was the Brit’s puppet leader. There are books on Bose that helped me understand him better: Peter Ward Fay, Leonard Gordon and Hugh Toye have written books published decades ago, and the first two were professional historians. Toye was a British Intelligence officer and his account is quite sympathetic to Bose. Gordon spoke to Japanese officers who saw a Samurai spirit in Bose.
The launching of the Jihad in Kashmir, and the events leading to and after it, are covered with more relevant detail in Nisid Hajari’s Mignight’s Furies.
Finally, there is evidence dating back to 1976 that Atlee’s government was motivated mainly by the INA trials and the 1946 naval mutiny in deciding to leave India. Atlee’s comment that the Quit India movement and the Congress had a “minimal” impact on the decision should at least get a small section in any account on independence.
So, in spite of the author’s credentials, there are some holes in the narrative, which is perhaps not such a surprise given the complexity of the topic.
The biggest gap, however, comes from not raising the right questions. Why did Mountbatten and the others who were responsible for an unnecessary partition do what they did? Why was the date for independence advanced? This is where fiction proves itself superior to history. In his haunting work Kitne Pakistan (literally “How Many Pakistans?”, but the English translation is called Partitions ), the Hindi novelist Kamleshwar notes (as Wolpert also does) that Jinnah was the only Muslim leader who could have made Pakistan happen. But he goes further, and asks the question: what were the chances that British Intelligence did not know Jinnah was terminally ill?
It is easy to be a critic and go on about shortcomings. The positives remain what they are: this is a great work that at least urges us to stop pretending that the “world crime” of Partition happened without any criminal intent.
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