Author: Claude Arpi
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: August 3, 2007
This month India will celebrate the 60th anniversary
of its independence. A large number of new books, their authors pretending
to rewrite the event, are being published - some have already hit bookstores.
Though they have not created the hysteria unleashed over Harry Potter's last
adventure, they have generated a lot of ink in the media.
One of these books brings out the glamorous
side of the most tragic event of the 20th century: The division of the sub-continent.
In her memoirs entitled India Remembered: A Personal Account of the Mountbattens
During the Transfer of Power, Pamela Mountbatten, the daughter of India's
last Viceroy, writes about her mother Edwina's "deep emotional love"
for India's first Prime Minister. It could be dismissed as another schmaltzy
tale written to reap some money, but the book contains serious assertions.
She admits that Lord Mountbatten did use Edwina to influence Jawaharlal Nehru
on Jammu & Kashmir.
The day I was reading this story (which seems
to shock nobody in India), I came across an article in Outlook in which Maj
Gen VK Singh, author of India's External Intelligence: Secrets of Research
and Analysis Wing had argued against the Kargil tapes being made public. The
officer wanted to prove the relation between the tapes and the Official Secrets
Act by taking the case of Brig Ujjal Dasgupta, Director, Computers, RAW who
was arrested in July 2006. This officer was accused of having passed sensitive
information to Rosanna Minchew, a CIA agent in the US Embassy. VK Singh argued,
"Charges against Dasgupta have been framed under Official Secrets Act.
As per the Act, if an Indian has any sort of communication with a foreign
national, he's presumed to have passed on information useful to an enemy."
Though Maj Gen Singh's comparing the release
of Kargil tapes and Brig Dasgupta's case is flimsy, one could ask: Can the
special relations between Nehru and Edwina be seen from this angle? Nobody
can deny today that the reference of Jammu & Kashmir to the UN has resulted
in three wars for India and a lot of hardship for the people of that State.
Let us look into what happened. At the stroke
of the midnight hour on August 14, India woke to freedom. Unfortunately, Maharaja
Hari Singh could remember the events of the previous year when Nehru had tried
to interfere in the State's affairs. While most Princes signed the Instrument
of Accession of their states to the Dominion of India, Maharaja Hari Singh
prevaricated. What would happen to him and his state under Nehru's rule?
Things came to a head by the end of October
1947 when raiders from North-West Frontier Province entered Jammu & Kashmir,
killing, looting, and raping as they surged forward. By October 26, they had
reached the outskirts of Srinagar. Maharaja Hari Singh had no choice but to
sign the Instrument of Accession.
Nehru had probably not yet realised that a
serious blunder had been made in asking Mountbatten to become the first Governor-General
of independent India (Mohammed Ali Jinnah had intelligently kept the post
for himself in Pakistan). Having a foreigner as the Head of the Dominion,
avoided having to choose among Congress leaders!
Mountbatten manipulated the same leaders to
become Chairman of a newly-created Defence Council. This was to have grave
repercussions on India's Kashmir policy. Mountbatten, a British officer, was
now at the helm of the Indian defence machinery. British Generals still serving
in India reported to him.
Early November 1947 saw a strange situation:
The formal head of the Indian state (a Britisher) decided to go to Karachi
to "negotiate" with Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan a solution to the
Jammu & Kashmir issue. He was at the same time a player, an employee and
the referee; his employer (London) was clearly batting for Pakistan for 'strategic
reasons'. Fortunately nothing came out of those negotiations. However, London's
game was clear by then: India had to be restrained from chasing the raiders
out of Jammu & Kashmir.
Events took a turn for the worse at the end
of December 1947 when Mountbatten convinced Nehru that India must refer the
Jammu & Kashmir issue to the UN. Though a great admirer of the Mountbattens,
Nehru was deeply disturbed. He recorded in a note: "Are we to allow Pakistan
to continue to train new armies for invasion and to allow its territory to
be used as a base for these attacks? The obvious course of action is to strike
at these concentrations and lines of communications in Pakistan territory.
From a military point of view this would be the most effective step. We have
refrained from taking it because of political considerations. We shall have
to reconsider this position because a continuation of the present situation
is intolerable ... We wish to avoid war, but it is merely deluding ourselves
to imagine that we are avoiding war so long as the present operations are
continuing on either side."
When he got to know of the note, Mountbatten
cunningly decided to act fast. From the start, he had thought that the best
way to derail an Indian offensive, which would have finished Pakistan, was
to refer the case to the UN where the issue would be quickly buried. Mountbatten
was not only a fine soldier, he was also a great manipulator. He knew that
within Clement Attlee's Cabinet, there were enough people like Noel Baker,
the Commonwealth Secretary, who would immediately take Pakistan's side against
India.
He then used his 'influence' on Nehru to convince
him that taking the issue to the UN was the 'only solution': The world would
immediately condemn Pakistan for supporting and assisting the raiders. On
December 20, Nehru reluctantly accepted the idea of a reference to the UN.
He thought that while appealing, India could at the same time prepare a contingency
plan for attacking the raiders' sanctuaries in Pakistan.
But the Indian leadership was deeply divided
on the reference to the UN. On December 22, Sardar Patel sent his resignation
to Nehru (he was later convinced by Gandhi to withdraw it). Under pressure,
Nehru sent an ultimatum to Pakistan Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan: The raiders
should be stopped immediately, failing which India would consider a counter-attack.
By then Mountbatten was riding high. He spent
Christmas day writing a long missive to Nehru, highlighting the danger of
a military escalation and plied Attlee with confidential information. It is
during those days probably that Edwina managed to make it "appealing
to his heart more than his mind". The events that followed are too well
known. India's case was buried in the bureaucratic corridors of the UN; the
raiders were allowed to remain on Indian soil.
What about the Official Secrets Act?