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
