Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

by Alex von Tunzelmann

Next to Akbar, Elizabeth was indeed a weak and feeble woman, with her dubious breeding, her squabbling and faction-ridden court, her cluttered and rickety palaces, and her grubby, unsophisticated, cold, dismal little kingdom. Nonetheless, the greater monarch generously agreed to humor her shabby emissaries at his fabulous court.

was the beginning of four centuries of intimacy and exchange, a love-hate relationship between India and Britain which would change the histories of both countries—and that of the whole world—beyond

That expiry date was canceled by her heir, James I, giving the East India Company exclusive trading rights in perpetuity. The only caveat: if it failed to turn a profit for three consecutive years, it voided all its rights. Thus a beast was created whose only object was money. It would pursue this object with unprecedented success.

With five acts, he gave it an amazing array of rights without responsibilities. By the 1670s, the company could mint its own coin, maintain its own army, wage war, make peace, acquire new territories and impose its own civil and criminal law—and all without any accountability, save to its shareholders. This was pure capitalism, unleashed for the first time in history. Combined with the gradual fragmentation of Mogul control, which had begun after Akbar’s death in 1605, it would prove to be almost unstoppable.

“The English have not taken India,” wrote Mohandas Gandhi succinctly in 1908; “we have given it to them.”12

remember and develop the tactic of a woman in a man’s world. All Gandhi’s most famous tactics—passive resistance, civil disobedience, logical argument, nonviolence in the face of violence, emotional blackmail—had come from Kasturbai’s influence. He freely admitted this: “I learned the lesson of non-violence from my wife.”4

great point about wives!

homespun cloth, being beaten up by the police) to be righteous. In 1907, Gandhi coined the term satyagraha, a Sanskrit word, meaning literally “truth-force.” The intent was to imply a powerful but nonviolent energy.22 During October 1908, while he was in prison for civil disobedience, his commitment was to be tested. Kasturba

was Sir Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet and Nobel laureate, who bestowed upon Gandhi the title by which he would become known. Tagore dubbed him Mahatma, meaning “great soul.”

Few political figures have been so widely misunderstood as Gandhi, in his own time or today. He

He had begun to reject Western ideals of progress and technology, and insisted that India’s future lay in a return to simple village life, not industrialization.

Amritsar was the most influential single incident in the radicalization of Congress, and in the radicalization of the Nehrus.30

The event differed neither in character nor greatly in scale from the previous riots in Bombay or Madras. Yet something about Chauri Chaura particularly upset Gandhi. “Let the opponent glory in our humiliation or so called defeat,” he wrote. “It is better to be charged with cowardice and weakness than to be guilty of denial of our oath and to sin against God.”62 He went on a five-day fast to purify himself and withdrew from all further satyagraha activities, with the exception of the boycott on British goods. He declared an intention to concentrate henceforth on “constructive” activities: absolute nonviolence; the setting up of Congress organizations in every village; a spinning wheel in every home; the rejection of ornamentation; Hindu-Muslim unity; “purification” of the Hindus by abstention from drink and drugs; and “killing the snake of untouchability.”63 Put simply, these were unachievable aims. The British themselves could not have drawn up a more prohibitive list of conditions against their own departure.

Gandhi’s most influential work, Hind swaraj, published in 1908, set out very clearly his point of view: that European civilization was corrupt, atheist and destructive, but that merely driving the British out of India would not serve to make India free. To be free, Indians needed to relinquish violence, material possessions, machinery, railways, lawyers, doctors, formal education, the English language, discord between Hindu and Muslim, alcohol and sex. It is for this reason that his campaigns so often faltered. Gandhi stood for virtue in a form purer than politics usually allows. Whenever he had to make a choice between virtue and politics, he always chose virtue. He strove for universal piety, continence and humility, regardless of the consequences.

It is impossible to assess how the Indian nationalist struggle might have proceeded without Gandhi, but there are ample grounds for thinking that a more earthly campaign led by a united Congress, perhaps under the joint leadership of Motilal Nehru and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, could have brought dominion status to India in the 1920s.

45 His renaming of the Untouchables as “Harijans” (children of God) was, for him, a way of showing respect for their role. This brought up one of the most fundamental divisions between Nehru and Gandhi. Nehru saw social and economic hardship as a cause of suffering, and therefore wanted to end it; Gandhi saw hardship as noble and righteous, and therefore wanted to spread the blessings of poverty and humility to all people.

Divide and rule had worked exceptionally well. Both sides now hated each other even more than they hated the British. But perhaps divide and rule had worked too well; the last thing the British wanted on their hands was a civil war.

The Labour leader, Attlee, told Churchill his views were “not widely shared,” and that imperialist braggadocio was “fatally short-sighted and suicidal.”65 Roosevelt leaned on him harder still.66

The United States had taken little interest in India until the rise of Gandhi had made it interesting. But owing to the Americans’ own long memory of colonial rule, as well as the nation’s principles of liberty and democracy, there was a general feeling against empires—and against the British Empire in particular.

it was Mountbatten who tried to persuade them to set a firm timetable for the handover.73 It was Mountbatten, too, who had opened negotiations with Aung San; it was Mountbatten who had wanted to negotiate with Ho Chi Minh; it was Mountbatten who had persuaded the Dutch to negotiate with independence advocate Sukarno in Indonesia. In all of these matters, he was led by his wife. Referring to Indonesia, he admitted: “Nobody gave me an idea of the strength of the nationalist movements. Edwina was the first person to give me an inkling of what was going on.”74 From then on, said Driberg, “she showed an instant strong sympathy with any Asian nationalist who was being oppressed by some American-backed right-wing regime.”

It cannot be pretended that Mountbatten was a brilliant sailor, nor even that he was a competent one. It cannot be pretended that he was a brilliant commander in chief. And it is certainly true that he could be hasty, negligent and easily distracted by trivialities. Nonetheless, he was the man of the coming age.

Wavell announced his intention to form an interim government of six Congress Hindus (including one Untouchable), five Muslim Leaguers, a Sikh, a Parsi and an Indian Christian. Jinnah had already accepted the plan, and it was rumored that Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel were ready to acquiesce. But Gandhi leaned heavily on Congress to reject it, on the grounds that there was no Congress Muslim in the government. Gandhi meant well: he hoped to demonstrate to Muslims that Congress was their party, too. In retrospect, though, most commentators have agreed that his derailment of the plan was a point of no return. The Muslim League’s mistrust of Gandhi reached a fever pitch; from then on, the partition of India was inevitable.32 It fell to Nehru, on 10 August, to inform Wavell that he was prepared to form a government. As soon as Nehru accepted the premiership, Jinnah dropped his support for the plan. The council of the Muslim League declared a Direct Action Day for 16 August. “We will have,” Jinnah announced, “either a divided India or a destroyed India.”33 It looked like he might get both. On the morning of 16 August, Calcutta erupted into a frenzy of violence.

If Jinnah is regarded as the father of Pakistan, Churchill must qualify as its uncle; and, therefore, as a pivotal figure in the resurgence of political Islam.

Being so far in the Americans’ pocket was an invidious situation. Britain was beginning to find out what it was like to be the humbled dependency of a much more powerful state.

A sense of foreboding was justified. The next fifteen months were to be the most dangerous, the most triumphant, the most terrifying, the most passionate and the most controversial of the Mountbattens’ lives.

India. Yet it had not been thought acceptable in Whitehall—partly

Stalin told him that Russia would not interfere in Indian independence, but noted that it was a time of grave dangers. This did not placate the British. “It would clearly be imprudent to take Stalin’s profession of non-interference at its face value, particularly having regard to certain recent signs to the contrary,” wrote the India secretary, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, to Mountbatten.13 Suddenly, the focus of President Truman’s campaign against communism shifted from Greece and Turkey—which had been worrying the United States for some weeks—abruptly eastward.

Mountbatten’s press attaché, Alan Campbell-Johnson, had already discovered that the consensus in Delhi was against his master.14

It is easy to laugh at Mountbatten’s obsession with decorating himself and with his fussing over protocol. But these trivialities were prerequisites for the job. A large portion of the viceroy’s responsibilities had to do with awarding honors, remembering faces, seating people appropriately at parties, writing correct letters and invitations, remembering how to address the divorced wife of the second son of an earl after she had remarried a sea captain, and so on. In all of these matters, Mountbatten’s skills were peerless. But the key to perfect protocol is knowing when to break it, and Mountbatten had reserved a surprise for his audience.

“This is not a normal viceroyalty on which I am embarking,” he admitted, in a forthright address which newspapers back in London reported with some shock. “Every one of us must do what he can to avoid any word or action which might lead to further bitterness or add to the toll of innocent victims,” he said. “I am under no illusion about the difficulty of my task. I shall need the greatest good will of the greatest possible number and I am asking India to-day for that good will.”17 This was the sound of the British Empire owning up to its limitations, and the old guard of the raj might have been outraged. Fortunately, the acoustics in the hall were so bad that few could hear.

Nevertheless, both Nehru and Liaquat were observed to be paying very close attention, and, during the last sentence, even the poised Lady Mountbatten could be seen to turn her head slightly to look at her husband.18 Mountbatten had established his style with immediate effect. The new regime was to be frank, inclusive and open minded. It was now full steam ahead t...

While all this was going on, Mountbatten had to meet the Indian leaders. For that first week, the two least compromising and highest profile among them declined his invitation, though he had been so anxious to meet these two in particular that he had written to each of them before his viceroyalty had begun.24 Mohammad Ali Jinnah, representing the Muslim League, remained in Bombay, making inflammatory speeches. Mohandas Gandhi, representing Mohandas Gandhi, was living among the outcastes in distant Bihar and refused to take

Many of the princes seemed determined to press for the independence of their states, rather than transferring their allegiance to an independent India—a plan which would fragment the subcontinent into dozens, perhaps hundreds, of private kingdoms. The

Both begged Mountbatten not to let the British leave India at all.25

While the viceroy struggled to generate a rapport with the Indians, his vicereine was doing far better. Edwina began by entertaining the wives of her husband’s guests, but, within a couple of days of arriving, she established her own political network. In

Very few of the women or, indeed, the men she met had ever been allowed into the Viceroy’s House before.

As a result, there were more powerful women in India’s Congress than there were in Britain’s Labour Party or in the United States’ Democratic Party at the time.

As Edwina would later tell an audience in London, “We shall have to wake up in this country when we see how the women of India have achieved emancipation to such a remarkable degree in spite of the backwardness of the country, the illiteracy of the people, the low standard of life, and all kinds of disadvantages from the point of view of religious feeling and other obstacles.”32

Whether Gandhi formed so immediate a connection with Lord Mountbatten is uncertain. Back inside the Viceroy’s House, Edwina made an excuse to leave, so that her husband and the Mahatma could get down to business. They did not. Gandhi first assured Mountbatten that he would come back for two hours every day that week; then started to tell his life story.

The Mahatma launched upon an unsuspecting Mountbatten his plan to quell the bubbling discontent between Hindu and Muslim. It was an extraordinary suggestion. Jinnah was to be made prime minister and could form a cabinet entirely composed of Muslims if he wished. Congress would agree to cooperate freely and sincerely. This would, Gandhi believed, satisfy the Muslims that the new India was not to be a “Hindustan,” and that their rights and freedoms would be represented. That day was April Fool’s Day, but Gandhi’s scheme was not a joke.

By 1947, even Gandhi’s colleagues in Congress were beginning to suspect that he had gone “a bit senile.”42 Mountbatten described himself as “staggered” by Gandhi’s suggestion but was not yet sure enough of his balance to dismiss the plan outright.43 Nehru was more realistic and told him it would not work. A note of frustration had become discernible lately in Nehru’s tone when he spoke of the Mahatma. He described the old man as “going round with ointment trying to heal one sore spot after another on the body of India, instead of diagnosing the cause of this eruption of sores and participating in the treatment of the body as a whole.”44 A couple of weeks later, Gandhi was forced to drop the plan on the grounds that Congress was not prepared to accept it. The rejection prompted his withdrawal from formal involvement in negotiations for the transfer of power, though he would continue to contribute from the sidelines.

Mountbatten answered that he could not, for it would mean handing over the reins to Congress and ignoring the Muslim League, which would precipitate civil war. Gandhi replied with a smile that, by signing the declaration, Jinnah had foresworn violence in perpetuity; he could not start a civil war now, even if he wanted to. Mountbatten was deeply shocked. It seemed to him that Gandhi was proposing to take advantage of Jinnah’s good intentions to crush Muslim dissent. “I find it hard to believe that I correctly understood Mr. Gandhi,” he wrote.61

was to prove one of his trickiest. “Since you have come out here,” Patel accused him, “things have got much worse. There is a civil war on and you are doing nothing to stop it. You won’t govern yourself and you won’t let the Central Government govern. You cannot escape responsibility for this bloodshed.”65 Patel demanded that he turn over full authority to the government to allow it to fight what he considered to be the insurgents: Muslim League armies in the Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province and Assam.

By the end of April, Mountbatten’s situation seemed bleak. His relationships with Gandhi, Jinnah and Patel were all in troublesome states; the princes presented a range of awkward grievances that he had not yet even begun to address; the Sikhs were threatening civil war; and violence continued to flare up across the country. A malaise began to spread among the viceroy’s staff. Alan

As he admitted to Edwina, it had become depressingly apparent to him that there was no chance of transferring power to a united India.22

He was beginning to suspect that both sides were deliberately avoiding a settlement. “The most we can hope to do, as I have said before, is to put the responsibility for any of these mad decisions fairly and squarely on the Indian shoulders in the eyes of the world, for one day they will bitterly regret the decision they are about to make.”23

That evening, Gandhi came close to endorsing Mountbatten publicly at his prayer meeting. “We have no right to question the Viceroy’s honesty until he betrays our trust,” Gandhi concluded. It was until, rather than unless, but still close enough to encouragement to yield press enthusiasm the next day.

The draft proposals, he wrote to Dickie that night, “produced a devastating effect upon me.” They presented, he said, “a picture of fragmentation and conflict and disorder, and, unhappily also, of a worsening of relations between India and Britain.”44

The plan from which Nehru recoiled was known as “Plan Balkan,” a name hardly more inspiring than “Operation Madhouse,” and indeed approximately synonymous.45 Having for centuries enforced rule by unelected men from London, the British government had recently developed an unprecedented enthusiasm for the will of the people—preferably, for the will of as many people as possible.

There would be an India, there would be a Pakistan, and each province could choose which one to join. But the principle of self-determination would be extended further yet. Should Bengal or the Punjab be divided in their wishes, each state could be split; or it could choose to become an independent nation. Should the troublesome North-West Frontier Province wish to become independent, it could do so too. As for the 565 princely states, each of those could also determine its ...

Old volumes of Lord Macaulay’s essays were retrieved from the attic and dusted off, and his assertion that the day India achieved self-rule would be “the proudest day in British history” presented as incontrovertible evidence that, indeed, that had always been absolutely true.