The Untold Story Of India Partition: The Shadow Of The Great Game by Narendra Singh Sarila

The author Narendra Singh Sarila was ADC (aide-de-camp) to Lord Mountbatten, served in the Indian Foreign Service, and held several positions as an Indian diplomat.

The book is about "influence of British strategic concerns on India’s partition" in the background of the Great Game played between British and Russia in South Asia.

"Britain was bound to protect its strategic and economic interests from the damaging consequences of its withdrawal from its vast two-century-old Empire in India.

How this was done by outmanoeuvring the Indian leaders and partitioning India is the theme of this untold story."

Well researched and based on personal observations

The author for his book "researched not only in the Oriental and India Section of the British Library (where David Blake, the curator, was very generous with his time) but also in the Hartley Library in Southampton (where Lord Louis Mountbatten’s archives are kept); the Public Records Office in Kew (to which place most British ministers and Foreign Office officials consigned their papers); the archives of the State Department of the USA (covering the period 1942–48 and containing the correspondence of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt with Prime Minister Winston Churchill and with his special envoys in India at that time); the National Archives in Washington; and the Library of the US Congress."

"As an ADC to the governor-general, Lord Mountbatten, I became familiar with the main locations where the developments had unfolded in New Delhi and Simla and caught glimpses of some of the players. I also gained insights from my father’s numerous British friends who had played a role in formulating or implementing British policy towards India. Later on, in the 1960s, while dealing with Pakistan affairs as an Indian diplomat in New Delhi and New York, I came face to face with the attitude of the great powers towards India and Pakistan that had their roots in the events of pre-independence India."

Cautionary tale

"The archives are also engrossing because the Indian leaders’ conversations with, and written communications to, the viceroy were meticulously recorded by the British and give details of their views and tactics, which do not fully emerge from the Indian records."

Using religion for strategic and political ends

"The successful use of religion by the British to fulfil political and strategic objectives in India was replicated by the Americans in building up the Islamic jihadis in Afghanistan for the same purpose, of keeping the Soviets at bay.

There is no gainsaying that nations will ever stop taking advantage of whoever or whatever comes in handy to achieve their immediate vital goals, not the least the US using the Pakistan military to counter the growing influence of the increasing jihadis in Pakistan. Or that the Great Game will not be played out again in Central Asia with different issues at stake and with different sets of partners.

However, the Western policies of exploiting political Islam to pressurize India have run their course. The improvement in Indo–US relations since the mid-1990s is the result of these changes in the strategic picture."

Need for continual British influence in Indian subcontinent

"Germany surrendered on 5 May 1945. The same day, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered an appraisal of ‘the long-term policy required to safeguard the strategic interests of the British Empire in India and the Indian Ocean’ by the Post-Hostilities Planning Staff of the War Cabinet. And, on 19 May, this top-secret appraisal report was placed before him.

The central point of this report was that Britain must retain its military connection with the subcontinent so as to ward off the Soviet Union’s threat to the area."

"On 18 April 1946, the British chiefs of staff, namely, Field Marshal Viscount Allenbrooke, Air Marshal Arthur William Tedder and Admiral Rhoderick McGrigor, again reported to the British cabinet: ‘Recent developments made it appear that Russia is our most probable potential enemy.’

And, to meet its threat ‘areas on which our war effort will be based and without which it would not be possible for us to fight at all would include India’."

"The note concluded: ‘We [ought to] consider should independent India get influenced by hostile powers such as Russia we could not maintain our power to move freely by sea and air in the northern part of the Indian Ocean areas which is of supreme importance to the British Commonwealth.’"

"Indian National Congress leaders, who would form the government of independent India, were determined to work out their own foreign policy and defence priorities, unhampered by British concerns."

"The Congress Party leaders, who would rule India after the British withdrew, were unlikely to cooperate with Britain on military matters and foreign policy, whereas the Muslim League Party, which wanted a partition of India, would be willing to do so."

"The breach to be caused in Britain’s capacity to defend the Middle East and the Indian Ocean area could be plugged if the Muslim League were to succeed in separating India’s strategic northwest from the rest of the country, a realizable goal considering the close ties that Lord [Victor Alexander John Hope] Linlithgow, Wavell’s predecessor, had built up with the Muslim League leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah during the Second World War."

"Pakistan [is] the keystone of the strategic arch of the wide and vulnerable waters of the Indian Ocean."

"After partition, Pakistan, together with Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Britain first joined the Baghdad Pact and later CENTO (which the USA also joined) to form the brick wall against Soviet ambitions.

Later, Pakistan entered into a bilateral military pact with Britain’s closest ally, the USA, and provided an air base in Peshawar in the North West Frontier Province to the CIA to enable U2 planes to keep a hawk’s eye on military preparations in the Soviet Union. (The existence of this secret base came to light only in 1961 after the US pilot, Gary Powers, who took off from there, was shot down over the Soviet Union.)"

Gandhi and Jinnah's views

The author writes about a conversation he had with Sir Paul Patrick who was assistant undersecretary at the India Office before 1947.

"One day Sir Paul told me that soon after Adolf Hitler had overrun France in the summer of 1940 and an invasion of the British Isles was imminent, Gandhiji, during a meeting with Lord Linlithgow, the viceroy, at Simla, stunned him by saying that the British should have the courage to let Germany occupy Britain: ‘Let them take possession of your beautiful Island, if Hitler chooses to occupy your homes, vacate them, if he does not give you free passage out, allow yourself, man, woman and child to be slaughtered.’

Sir Paul then asked me whether Gandhi was turning senile by that time. Faced with such an impracticable – even unethical – attitude of the leader of the Indian National Congress Party, no wonder, Sir Paul said that Lord Linlithgow could not afford to lose the cooperation and support of Jinnah and the Muslim League to ensure the successful mobilization of Indian resources for the Second World War."

"Winston Churchill’s continuous jibes that he was a charlatan and a humbug."

Subhas Chnadra Bose also has similar views. "Bose was heir to the more revolutionary traditions of Bengal. On his very first meeting with Gandhiji in 1921, he had declared that the Mahatma ‘showed a deplorable lack of clarity in his political aims’."

The contrast between Gandhi and Jinnah was also clear. "While Gandhiji had offered tears and sympathy, Jinnah offered the viceroy the means to win the war and a clear compact."

Lord Linlithgow summed his views: "He [Jinnah] represents a minority and a minority that can only hold its own with our assistance’".

"He [Jinnah] was extremely doubtful as to the capacity of India and Indians to look after themselves’, reported Linlithgow. And added: ‘If the British by any chance be beaten in the war and driven out of India, India would break into a hundred pieces in three months and lie open, in addition, to external invasion."

"Jinnah, on 24 March 1940, proclaimed at Lahore that ‘the Muslims are a separate nation according to any definition of a nation and they must have their own homelands, their territory and their states’."

"His [Jinnah's] consistency and directness, as opposed to the contradictions and confusability of the Congress Party policies, particularly as they appear in cold print in Linlithgow’s telegrams and letters, created an aura of his strength and integrity."

"Quoting how V.P. Menon viewed the situation: The Congress opposition to the war effort and the [Muslim] League’s de facto support for it had convinced he British that Hindus generally were their enemies and the Muslims their friends. And this consideration must have added force to the silent but effective official support for the policy of partition."

Indian National Congress

"At the time Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, even though the Central Government in Delhi was in the viceroy’s hands, the Congress Party ministries were running the governments in eight out of eleven British provinces of India and were the foremost partners of Britain in governing the country. They exercised authority over three-fourths of the population of British India and the territories they governed included the British-built port cities of Madras and Bombay, the old Mughal capital of Agra, the ancient cities of Banaras (now called Varanasi) and Patliputra (now called Patna), Lucknow, Ahmedabad and Nagpur and the Pathan stronghold of Peshawar on the Indian side of the Khyber Pass from where the British had played the Great Game to restrain Russian penetration into Central Asia."

"However, misunderstandings between the British and the Congress Party, the main political party fighting for India’s freedom, had started to build up right from the beginning of the Second World War."

"The irony of the situation was that within two months of the outbreak of the Second World War, the Congress Party had given up all its gains by resigning from the governments in the provinces. The reasons given by the Congress Party for this grave step were that India had been dragged into the war without any consultation with its elected representatives and that their demand for a declaration about India’s freedom after the war and for associating them in some manner or the other with the Central Government in the meantime had been rejected."

This did not go as planned.

"If the aim of the exercise was to pressurize the British to grant more power to the nationalists forthwith, the result was rather different from that anticipated. Their resignations reduced the British dependence on the Congress Party to mobilize Indian resources for the war and made it less necessary for them to accommodate the party’s demands."

"Jinnah, ensconced in his villa in the tree-clad Malabar Hill in Bombay overlooking the Arabian Sea, was so delighted at the Congress Governments’ resignations from the provincial governments that the words ‘Himalayan blunder’ escaped his lips. And he declared 22 December 1939 as ‘Deliverance Day’ – deliverance from Congress rule – and immediately went on the offensive to win by diplomacy and bluster what he could never have obtained at that time by popular vote, even of the Muslims of India."

Delayed Transfer of Power to India

"The British were, meanwhile, making every effort to convince Roosevelt that the blame for the failure of the British initiative fell squarely on Indian shoulders.

They also tried to drive home the point that it was not Britain’s reluctance to hand over power that was delaying self-government in India but the lack of agreement among the diverse political elements in India."

Meanwhile, "50,000 Indian volunteers were joining the Army each month, despite Gandhiji and Nehru standing aside, which was the ground reality."

Quality of Indian leaders

"The Indian leaders remained plagued by the Indians’ age-old weaknesses of arrogance, inconsistency, often poor political judgement and disinterest in foreign affairs and questions of defence."

"Overconfidence and bad judgement made them spurn in 1928 Jinnah’s efforts to make the muslims agree to the abolition of the pernicious separate electorates. (Pages 82 and 83).

They failed to include, after the party’s massive victory in provincial elections, in their governments, in 1937, those Muslim League leaders who wanted to taste the plums of office.

The British archives reveal that in their negotiations with the viceroys in the 1940s, there was no consistency – without which there could be no success in diplomacy or war – or indeed a clear, realistic policy."

"Protected by British power for so long and then focused on a non-violent struggle, the Indian leaders were ill prepared, as independence dawned, to confront the power play in our predatory world.

Their historic disinterest in other countries’ aims and motives made things none the easier. They had failed to see through the real British motivation for their support to the Pakistan scheme and take remedial measures. Nor did they understand that, at the end of the Raj, America wanted a free and united India to emerge and to find ways to work this powerful lever."

Looking to the future

"Besides the strategic factor, there were other reasons for Britain to favour partition. One was the doubt in the British mind that India might not have a very good chance of surviving as an independent state.

A top-secret appreciation, prepared in the Commonwealth Relations Office soon after British withdrawal (partly quoted in Chapter 9), elaborates this doubt.

Factors such as India’s heterogeneous population, the North–South divide, the communal problem, the unruliness of the Sikhs and the policy of the Indian communists to spread dissension are cited in this context.

One can’t say how far Attlee, or how many of his colleagues, accepted this analysis. But notions of India’s instability were deeply embedded in the thinking of British officials, senior Conservative politicians and many journalists, including editors of newspapers. In the circumstances, it is not surprising that the British would hesitate to put all their eggs in the Indian basket."

Lessons learned

Relationships matter: build relationships well before the cross roads of history.

Do not boycott: you lose all bargaining power as Gandhi and Indian National Congress did with their 'Himalayan blunder'.

Leave your principles behind: example is of Gandhi who became irrelevant becasue of his principles of non-violence. There is no place for "upholding ideals divorced from realities".

Need for clarity, consistency, and directness: compare the approach of Jinnah and Gandhi.

Masses invite their own slavery: example of North West Frontier Provinces (NWFP) which were predominantly Muslim but chose to align themselves with Hindu Congress and opposed to Muslim State. Another examples was of 50,000/month recruitment for Second World War while the leaders spoke of independence.

Need for global outlook: "Partition was a politico-strategic act." Religious differences was the excuse.




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