Nehru: The Invention of India

by Shashi Tharoor

As the impasse in the interim government continued, Mountbatten and his advisers drew up a ‘Plan Balkan’ that would have transferred power to the provinces rather than to a central government, leaving them free to join a larger union (or not). The British kept Nehru in the dark while ‘Plan Balkan’ was reviewed (and revised) in London. When he was finally shown the text by Mountbatten at Simla on the night of 10 May, Jawaharlal erupted in indignation, storming into his friend Krishna Menon’s* room at 2 a.m. to sputter his outrage. Had the Plan been implemented, the idea of India that Jawaharlal had so brilliantly evoked in his writings would have been sundered even more comprehensively than Jinnah was proposing. Balkanization would have unleashed civil war and disorder on an unimaginable scale, as provinces, princely states and motley political forces contended for power upon the departure of the Raj.