William Tyler
Partition of India and its Consequences

William Tyler | Partition of India and its Consequences | 06.21.21

- William?

• Yep. Sorry.

• Hi.

• Would you want me to begin?

• Hi. Hi.

• Hi.

• Yes. I’m going to hand over to you.

• Okay. Right.

• Okay, over to you. So what we’re going to do, so today is the Partition of India and its Consequences.

• Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. We are. Can I just tell everyone-

• My connection is very bad. All right, over to you.

• Thanks very much indeed. Just a word before I begin, everyone, on my blog, which you can find under the word, one word, talkhistorian, www.talkhistorian.com, I put up a short book list relating to India and partition this morning, and you can look that up, and back in June, 2020, I had an article on a map, a very short article, and a map of Kashmir, which some of you may wish to look at when we finish today.

So let me take you back to the year 1946, the year after the Second World War had ended, and my father was, with many other allied troops, still stationed in India. He was in India with the Royal Artillery and had been seconded to the Hong Kong and Singapore Royal Artillery. And in 1946 he was waiting for the ship home and demobilisation. He’d been in India for the potential amphibious invasion of Japan, which fortunately never happened, fortunately for our family and for hundreds and thousands of families across America, Britain, and the Commonwealth. So that was 1946. 1946 was not only the year after the war had ended both in Europe and in Asia, but was also the year before Indian Independence, which comes on the 15th of August, 1947.

And when I say India in that context, I mean the British Raj or all of the subcontinent. But of course, when independence did come on the 15th of August, the British Raj was split into two, into Pakistan and into India. My father later recalled that in 1946, whilst he was still in India and stationed just outside Bombay, modern day Mumbai, he attended a cinema in Bombay with other officers, other British officers. At the end of the film, they were expected, well, actually, they were under orders to stand up during the playing of the national anthem.

British people listening will remember that when we were young, the national anthem was always played at the end of a cinema performance. So they were expected to stand up and he was shocked because it was the first time that when they stood up, the Indians, instead of standing up, left and booed the national anthem. And he said that was at the point where he realised that British rule had to come and was coming to an end. It was obvious to almost everybody, Indian and British, that independence had to come. After all, there had been independence movements in India in the 1920s and ‘30s. And indeed during the war, there were still movements for independence.

There had been negotiations in London during the 1930s or so-called Imperial Conferences. And I believe if war had not come in 1939, that India would probably have achieved independence earlier than 1947. It seemed inevitable to almost everyone that this was the end of British India. One of the reasons it’s at the end is because Indians themselves, and I’m embracing Pakistan, of course, at this point, Indians as a whole wanted independence. And the British ruled in India from the 18th century by, almost by agreement. There was, if you discount the India mutiny in 1857, which was a military mutiny rather than a national movement for independence, then there had been, for most of the 19th century, in the British Raj of the 19th century, an acceptance of British rule.

Because if there had not been an acceptance, Britain could never ever have held India. We simply didn’t have enough troops to hold it. It was not possible to do it without the general agreement… I suppose if this talk was being given by a Indian nationalist, he might say acquiescence of the people. Now, whatever words you want to use, it isn’t until the 1930s that there is an awareness. And now, of course, one of the reasons for that is that many of the leaders in India at the time, people like Nehru were educated here. Remember Nehru was educated at Harrow school and subsequently at the University of Cambridge. And at the bar. I mean they were educated here, Jinnah, likewise at the English bar.

And so it’s the story that really Nelson Mandela tells in his autobiography, when he came to study in Britain, he realised that Britain was not quite the Britain that he’d been taught about in South Africa, that it was not this great humanitarian democratic force at all. And having educated these leaders or those who are going to become leaders in post-independence India, there is no way that Britain could hold on. Anyhow, by the time we get to 1947, most of the Indian Civil Service, the famous ICS is in the hands of Indians, and my father served with Indian officers, I have a dinner menu which is signed in the Officer’s nest by those that are at dinner to celebrate my birth actually. And it’s signed equally by British officers and Indian officers. We were already bowing out by the time we get to the middle of the 20th century. There was no way.

But of course many of you will remember that Britain had been humiliated in Asia during the Second World War. We lost Hong Kong, we lost, of all places, Singapore, that was thought to be impregnable. And we had sunk HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales. We never, that is to say British prestige never recovered from that. And so it is clear that post-war India is at the top of any British government’s list of things that have to be done. And as you know, in 1945, Churchill’s national government is defeated or, and it goes out of office rather, Churchill is defeated leading the Conservative Party in a general election and Attlee and the Labour Party come to power. And Attlee could not ignore, even if he wanted to, the Indian question. But Attlee saw it not just a question that he couldn’t ignore, but a question of urgency.

How to achieve Indian independence in as short as time as possible and without loss of life? Now the Labour government was to achieve the first to get Indian independence done in the shortest possible time, and it failed spectacularly in the second. That is the say, without loss of life. Because of course, at partition there was a great loss of life. To start the ball rolling, Attlee sent three cabinet ministers to India in March of 1946 to look at the situation on the ground and lay out the process towards independence.

The three cabinet ministers arrived in Delhi in March '46, where Lord Pethick-Lawrence, who was the Secretary of State for India, Albert Victor Alexander, who was the first Lord of the Admiralty, and the most important one, so Stafford Cripps. Cripps have been involved with Indian negotiations pre-war and Cripps have been sent by Churchill to India in 1942 to make a report on the ground. So Stafford Cripps is now President of the Board of Trade, a really important figure known of course to the Tories as Stifford Crapps which Churchill always found amusing. One of the books I’m using today is John Keay’s “Midnight’s Descendants”.

Now, midnight is the time of independence on the 15th of August. So when there’s a reference to midnight, it means precisely that, independence. And this is called “Midnight’s Descendants: South Asia from Partition to the Present Day”. John Keay is a very good British historian of Asia and he writes, “All three of these cabinet ministers where men of high principle, Pethick-Lawrence, had once received a custodial sentence for encouraging suffragette defiance. Cripps was a vegetarian and a teetotaler and had once been expelled from the Labour party as too left wing. And Alexander, a blacksmith’s son, had been known to double as a lay preacher. All sympathise with India’s national aspirations.”

So there’s no lingering imperialism in the Labour party as regards Indian independence. Had it been a conservative government, there would’ve been, there would’ve been lingering feelings about Empire, particularly because Churchill was, Churchill was really, I think, petrified at what the consequences for Britain would be of Indian independence. These three cabinet ministers were given a very specific task by Attlee, and the task was said, quote, this is a quotation. This is what they were told: “To work out in cooperation with India’s political leaders the means by which Indians can themselves decide the form of their new institutions, with the minimum of disturbance and the maximum of speed,” the minimum of disturbance, the maximum of the speed.

This meant establishing a constitution, which at the time they were thinking of one country of India, of British India, and it would have one constitution. Now of course, that constitution would need to take into account minorities, so it would need to take into account specifically the Muslim minority, but it would need to take into account Hindu minorities in Muslim areas. It was a complex situation to get a constitution, but they thought they could achieve it. They thought they could bring everything together. Now the two parties they have to deal with is Nehru, president of the Indian National Congress, Hindu, and Jinnah, head of the Muslim League.

Now, at the beginning, in 1942, they had been quite, well, Jinnah had been very outspoken. Jinnah had made it quite clear that he wanted an independent Muslim state, Pakistan. But by 1946, when the British ministers arrived, they appear, both Nehru and Jinnah, to be more moderate, more, well, maybe moderate isn’t the right word, more amenable to a British solution of one country, but with a complex federal style, in some way, Constitution. And in a sense, the man who had pushed that and had the massive support was the man who wasn’t present in those negotiations, which is of course Gandhi. But by May, 1946, it was clear to the British ministers that they could not get an agreement with Nehru and Jinnah, which everyone could sign up to.

They couldn’t agree on the best way forward for a constitution. Desperately, they held a further conference at Simla, the greatest of the Raj’s Hill stations. And that proved to be quite a disaster, because Jinnah and the Muslim League, and Nehru and the Indian National Congress fell out badly. Once you got into detail, they simply could not agree. Back in Delhi, the three British ministers tabled a recommendation of a three-tiered constitution. Now, to say it was cumbersome would be an understatement. To say it was unworkable would be nearer the truth. It’s the sort of thing that academics might sit down and do. It’s the sort of thing that cabinet ministers from another country, given the task, can write it. And on paper it looked a solution. In practise, it was no solution to either Nehru or to Jinnah, it simply didn’t make sense.

Cripps then made a speech in which Cripps is quite clear, when he’s back in London, Cripps said this, “We asked the Indian people to give our statement calm and careful consideration. I believe that the happiness of their future depends on what they do now. But if the plan is not accepted, no one can say how great will be the disturbance or how acute and long the suffering that will be self-inflicted by the Indian people.”

Now that is of course turns out to be true, but it is also an example of Britain washing its hands of India. We can’t cope with India, we cannot cope with an India that wishes for independence. We have not got enough troops. We can’t hold India by force. And we’ve lost control… Bluntly, we’ve lost control once these negotiations begin in 1946, everybody knows independence is coming and everyone fears what the consequences might be. And so the British are anxious to wash their hands. It’s not our fault, if anything goes wrong, it’s your fault because you won’t agree.

But the fact that they won’t agree had been pretty obvious all the way through. We, the British, had simply ignored that. The British did set up two interim structures. They set up a Constituent Assembly, which they hoped one day will be a parliament, and an interim government. And John Keay writes this, and it’s not good news, I have to say, of that interim arrangement. And he writes, “Within days of the cabinet mission returning to London, the Constituent Assembly was being boycotted by the Muslim League, while the interim government was being boycotted by the Indian Congress.”

It was not workable. They couldn’t agree a constitution and they couldn’t agree to work together. For those of us who are British, this is not much different than the sort of situation in Northern Ireland. And like Northern Ireland, violence broke out. Broke out between the communities. The first happened in Calcutta on the 16th of August, 1946, the Muslims declared it Direct Action Day. And there were between 5,000 and 10,000 casualties, both Muslim and Hindu. Between October and November, 1946 at Noakhali, there were over 5,000 Hindu casualties, mostly deaths, 50,000 refugees.

And an Indian historian has written, “Violence here bordered on genocide.” “Violence here bordered on genocide.” Now of course, in 1946, genocide was something that the world was aware of and it looked as though Muslim against Hindu and Hindu against Muslim would turn out to be a genocidal conflict. Between October and November, also in 1946, there’s trouble in Bihar and thousands are killed, mostly Muslim. By December, '46 there’s trouble in Hazara, which is modern day Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs were massacred by Muslims.

And so by the end of 1946, the start of a truly horrific story, which stretched either side of independence on partition in August, 1947. And the British, British wanted out. Like my dad in 1946, all he wanted to do was to come home, hopefully to meet me for the first time. And that’s what they wanted to do. These are conscripted troops. They just were desperate to come home. Wasn’t then a question of getting on a plane and flying them back. This isn’t Vietnam, they had to come on a boat. It’s going to take a long time, and the bureaucracy of releasing them, of demobilising them was horrendous.

And the British, the more they sent troops home, obviously, the fewer they had. It was very difficult. And troops, they had, many of them were Indian. And how could you work if you had Muslim officers and Hindu officers together? There are stories that on the very day of partition across India, northern India in particular, in officer’s message, which had always been of course British officer’s message, the Indian and the Pakistani officers had to say goodbye to each other. And they did it as friends. And they did it as friends. But they’re sent into conflict almost immediately. The British had feared a civil war.

See, the Indian Army was quite different, the Indian Army, contrary to Japanese expectations, because of Indian independence and the Japanese of course had promised independence, we all know what that would’ve meant, but they had promised it and some Indians bought into it. But had it not been for the Indian Army holding firm at Kohima, and then the British would’ve lost India to the Japanese like they’d lost Malaya and Burma. But they didn’t. And they didn’t because the Indian Army stood firm.

But now, with independence beckoning, and the British seeking to get out, then British authority is weakened, and there was no other authority in place. Is it going to be one country? Is it going to be two? Where is the seat of power when the interim government is at each other’s throats? Now, it is true that communal violence was nothing new in India. The British had dealt with communal violence before. But not on the scale of 1946 they hadn’t. And we are very reluctant to intervene.

It was a case of, let them get on with it, let them get on with it. It’s like the teacher in the playground with two little boys fighting, and the teacher says, well, let them get on with it. They’ll sorted out. Except of course they didn’t really sort it out, but we didn’t care. We needed to get out. But there were real problems. And one of the biggest problems was the Punjab.

And as Gautam Madhav, an Indian historian writes, of the Punjab, he writes this, “The 2.5 million strong volunteer army raised by the British from India was the largest volunteer force in history.” That’s the Indian Army. “Upon returning to the Punjab…” They fought all over the war zones. “Upon returning to the Punjab, where many of these soldiers came from, they provided a well-trained armed force to be used in riots. Studies have shown how Punjab districts which had a higher number of returnees with combat experience had a higher level of ethnic cleansing.” “A higher level of ethnic cleansing.”

The Punjab was to see the very worst of the violence of partition. So the end of 1946 comes, 1947 dawns and Attlee now, as it were, plays his last card. Attlee has to appoint a Viceroy for India and he needs someone of standing. He needs someone he can trust. So the person with experience in Asia, from the war, is Lord Mountbatten. Lord Mountbatten is also a royal. And so the hope is that the Indians will respond positively to having a member of the royal family there. As well as Mountbatten carried, as it was, some of the glory from the victory over Japan. And useful to Attlee was Mountbatten was actually left wing and not a right winger.

That sounds strange if you’re not British, but not all the royal family, if they were allowed to vote, would vote conservative. And Mountbatten wouldn’t have done. So Attlee the appoints Mountbatten as the Viceroy of India, the last Viceroy of India, because he’s told he’s got to work for Indian Independence on the 20th of February, 1947. His political orders were to get independence done by the 30th of June, 1948, quote, “At the latest.”

Now the 30th of June '48 is almost a year after independence actually came on the 15th August, 1947. Why? Because Mountbatten, who is a strange character, Mountbatten took it into his head that as a naval officer, he could improve on the time scale set by the Prime Minister and he will deliver independence sooner than the Prime Minister stated, the 30th of June, 1948. And on arriving in India, his view is reinforced that Britain has to get out as quickly as possible, because the situation of 1946 is now deteriorating further in terms of intercommunal violence in 1947.

And we can do nothing about it. And Mountbatten is quite aware of that. So Mountbatten is determined to get out as quickly as possible, but he’d also been told by Attlee that there was no movement on the issue there must be one Indian nation, one country, not two. Mountbatten finally arrived in India on the 22nd of March, 1947. His arrival sparked, not enthusiasm for him, but the reverse. A large outpouring of intercommunal violence in Delhi, Bombay, not anti-British, but between the communities.

This really reinforced Lord Mountbatten’s view, we must get out. And before the Prime Minister’s date of June, '48. Why? Well, Mountbatten said himself, he believed that if we didn’t get out, there would be civil war, and a civil war that we could do nothing about. We would be caught in the middle, if you like. But not only was Mountbatten in a hurry, so was Nehru and Jinnah, because they’re being pushed by their own supporters. And they also believed that if they can get independence, then the violence might diminish.

Everyone wants a quick resolution, but a quick resolution isn’t always the answer. And it’s been argued that going for a quick resolution meant that everyone took their eye off the ball of the violence that was taking place. Mountbatten came to the view that it was not possible for there to be a united India post-independence. He came to the view that there must be a partition, there must be a Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan. And he then thought very naval, very military, and very blinkered, in one sense, he thought that if everyone was given a set date, then independence was going to happen, it would focus minds. And so he said, right, in three months’ time, at midnight on the 14th and 15th of August, 1947, there will be independence, there will be two states, now go away and sort it out. Except no one knew how to draw the two states on the map.

So Mountbatten appointed a man called, well, he actually asked, he asked the judiciary back in London, within the cabinet, he asked the Law Chancellor, could he be sent a British judge to make the dividing line between Pakistan and India? This was something the British had done time and again, even in the subcontinent, during the imperial days of drawing lines on maps. But this was not so easy. The Lord Chancellor said, I’m awfully sorry, Lord Mountbatten, but we don’t have any judges to spare. We’re awfully busy. It’s after the war, you understand? But we’ll sent you a jolly good bloke, and they sent Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who was a barrister, very clever, but had zero experience of India, never been, never drawn up maps, never done any border work, he was completely hopeless, an underwhelming figure, I’ve written on my notes, for such a huge role, and he’s given three months.

I mean, this is a vast territory. So he soon made the decision not to actually go and look on the ground. So he got mad things like lines drawn through the middle of a village. And he looked at rivers, and it didn’t work and it was never going to work. It would’ve taken a couple of years if everyone worked at 110%. It’s unlikely really to have been achieved in less than three years. And he had three months. He had a boundary commission. It’s true. But that was not particularly helpful.

It isn’t an easy map to draw. There isn’t an obvious geographical line. It’s not like having the river Rhine, for example, in Europe or the Alps or whatever, that you, where do you draw the line? And these communities might be heavily Hindu, sorry, might be heavily Hindu or heavily Muslim, but they have minorities of the other groups there. So do you draw sort of wiggly line, but then there’s still a one village in the wrong place? But given the task that you’ve got to do it within three months, well, you do the best you can.

It’s like our parents used to say it before an exam. Well, you can only do the best you can, which has always struck me as a rather silly piece of advice. And in a sense, Sir Cyril was told, you can only do the best you can. Well, thank you, but it can’t be done. And so why did he, why was he approved by Attlee? Oh, those of you who are American can guess, they went to the same school. They both went to Haileybury, whose full title is Haileybury and Imperial Services College.

So Cyril Radcliffe appeared to be, in the British phrase, a safe pair of hands. A good chap. And so Radcliffe goes, given this task of drawing the map by Mountbatten, and he draws the map, and it’s what led to the trouble. Now, you might say, who could have drawn a better map? I don’t know. We shall never know. Could a better map ever have been drawn? I think logically one could say it could have been, but more importantly than that, could a better map have been drawn and arrangements made for the transference of people and not the chaos of partition?

Transferring people is always difficult, but possible. It can be done with a measure of goodwill. After all, in the American War of Independence, the empire loyalists left for Canada. And although there’s tension between America and Canada at the time, it’s settled. But they were then nowhere near the same numbers. And for all intents and purposes, the difference was political and not religious or ethnic or cultural. Here in India, it’s religious, it’s ethnic, it’s cultural, and it’s deep, deep in the Indian DNA, from pre-British times, let alone British times. Now interestingly, the Indian historian I quoted just now, says, in his view, there were benefits to partition.

Now, I’d never heard anyone speak about benefits to partition. So I was particularly interested. And he said, well, the first thing is it avoided civil war. Well, if you were university students, then your question to answer before next week’s tutorial is, can you define civil war? Or are the events post-independence and partition amount to civil war? After all, civil wars aren’t declared like main wars. Civil wars are awkward, untidy things, legally untidy. So I’m not sure what he means by avoidance of civil war. His second point is a much better one. And he said that Pakistan acted as a buffer state between, he’s Indian, of course, acted as a buffer state between India and the USSR during the Cold War and prevented a conflict with Russia, another point of conflict like Vietnam and Korea. It solved that problem.

Well, I suppose it did, it solved the old British Northwest Indian Frontier problem with Russia and Afghanistan. Yes, it did do that. And maybe you had to concede that, but I’m not convinced. And then finally he added this, which I thought I would share with you in his words, “With the largely peaceful existence of Hindus and Muslims for over 70 years now in India,” this is since independence, “the two nation theory has not played out. Today the richest, most famous Muslims of the subcontinent are Indian. While India has regularly experienced Hindu-Muslim violence, for most Muslims, life post-partition has been a peaceful existence and the percentage of the Muslim population in India continues to rise.”

Now, he is Hindu, an Indian Muslim would not say that, but on the other hand, it has, in historical terms, British and pre-British India, been, he’s correct, relatively peaceful. He goes on to say, “On the other hand, in Pakistan, the average living standard continues to fall. And it has experienced significant violence. For the minorities in Pakistan it’s been a non-positive experience and they’re the victims of the two nation theory.”

Well, that’s, to some extent, true. And of course, it’s the problem of the rise of fundamentalist Islam and of groups putting themselves in Pakistan, in areas of Pakistan which are almost unenterable by the Pakistan authorities. Now, that’s a wider question about the role of Islam in the world. And maybe you can argue that because Pakistan contained that issue of fundamentalist Islam and terrorism within its borders, it did not hit India in a way that it could have done. Well, there is some truth in that argument.

But the reality in the immediate aftermath of the 15th of August, 1947 was not a good one. The immediate aftermath was, in fact, grim. There’s a whole story we need to tell, that I need to tell you about what’s going to happen. It is a very, very difficult story. And one of the things that’s difficult about it is how Bengal, and Bengal on one hand, Kashmir on another hand, really was difficult. And Punjab. These are the areas of difficulty. In the Punjab was divided. And Punjab is northeast India, up on the top northeast India, and that was going to be divided by Sir Cyril Radcliffe into an Indian part and a Pakistani part.

And one historian has written, the mostly Muslim western part of the Punjab became Pakistan’s Punjab province. The mostly Hindu and Sikh eastern part became India’s East Punjab state. Many Hindus and Sikhs lived in the west, and many Muslims lived in the east. And the fears of these minorities were so great that the partition saw many people displaced and much intercommunal violence. Some have described this violence in the Punjab as retributive genocide, retribution against Hindu and against Muslim and against Sikh. Migration takes place. And it’s been estimated that during the partition period, around 12 million people actually moved from one part to another part, six and a half million Muslims moved from East Punjab to West, and 4.7 million Hindus and Sikhs move the other way.

Hang on, just stop and think. We’re not talking about a football crowd. 6.5 million Muslims move, and in the other direction, 4.7 million Hindus and Sikhs, 12 million people on the march, 12 million! It’s estimated it could be more. 12 million were moving. And killed, as they went. I had a friend whose father was a British officer in Kashmir, and she was being sent home to get out of the trouble. And she was on a train from Kashmir. And her nanny who was with her, pulled the blinds down in the train carriage. So she didn’t see the bodies lying by the tracks, but being a rather naughty girl, she said she looked underneath the, to see what was going on, and she just saw body after body, mile after mile.

The interchange of populations wasn’t organised. It was horrendous. We don’t know in the Punjab the numbers of people who were killed. The lowest estimate is 200,000. The highest estimate, 2 million. It’s likely to be towards the higher end rather than the lower, is now thought. No one could count the numbers of dead. And the Punjab was the worst place. Some of you may remember Kipling’s novel, “Kim”, which opens with the gun Zam-Zammah. Kim sits on the gun because the British rule the Punjab. The British have given up and 200,000 to 2 million people are killed, and 12 million people are walking from one part of the Punjab to another.

And it was the same in Bengal. Punjab up there on the northeast, Bengal in the northwest. And Bengal was going to be divided into two, two separate entities. West Bengal to India, East Bengal to Pakistan. East Bengal to Pakistan became independent in a war against Pakistan in 1971 and forms the country today of Bangladesh, because it, the two bits, East and West Pakistan never join. How the dot, dot, dot did Cyril Radcliffe ever believe you could have a country divided into two with the enemy, inverted commas, India, in between? Doesn’t makes sense!

Now, because of the war of succession by Bangladesh, there are two countries, Bangladesh and Pakistan. And if Pakistan is poor, Bangladesh is poorer. And Bangladesh, how strange is this? Bangladesh is almost a client state of India. When western countries put goods out to be made, manufactured in India, they’re often subcontracted to Bangladesh. And if you look at your cheap clothes, certainly in Britain, you may well find a message on the back that says, made in Bangladesh, or your shoes, because the Indians put it out because it’s cheaper, when we put it out to India in the first place, they can make shoes cheaper than we can, and Bangladesh can make it cheaper, so the India is the middle man who makes the profit.

How strange is the world, what roles economics play? And we won’t go into the whole issue of the threat of climate change to Bangladesh and Pakistan, but they’re in the forefront of that particular problem. There was huge number of refugees from, Hindu refugees from East Bengal. They moved across into the Indian part. And the whole thing was rather like the Punjab, the death, movement… Southern India, of course, is much easier. It’s the Northeast and the Northwest and these two huge, huge areas of Bengal and the Punjab. The British had coped in both, but not now, not now.

And then there’s a further problem, up there in the Northeast and that is Kashmir. Kashmir. Now, a little bit of history, British India, the Raj, had two ways… The British ruled in two ways, either directly to the Viceroy and his officers across India. They also ruled indirectly through Indian princes. And at the time of partition, there were over 560 Indian princes. Some of them were tiny little statelets, some of them very large, like Kashmir, and Kashmir was a problem. Oh, they could choose which country to join, India or Pakistan. And in almost every case it was an obvious choice.

In Kashmir it wasn’t. The Maharaja was Hindu, but his population was largely Muslim and he had to make a decision. Now, the decision he should have made was to join Pakistan, because his people are Muslim, but he doesn’t, he hesitates, because he’s Hindu. And in his hesitation, Pakistan sends troops in, well, not officially, but they’re sent in and they occupy Northern Kashmir. He, the Maharaja, appeals to the Governor General, the Governor General, the ex-Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten. And Lord Mountbatten agrees to give assistance, but only on the grounds that the ruler accedes to India.

Well, that didn’t make sense. But the Indian government sent troops in. So we’ve now got Pakistani and Indian troops in Kashmir. Eventually the United Nations gets involved because there’s military clashes between the two. The United Nations gets involved. And they said, oh, beautifully United, we’re going to hold a referendum, and every Kashmiri can vote. And if they vote 51% to be India, they will be India. And if they vote 51% to be Pakistan, they’ll be Pakistan. Well, we know the horror of that sort of referendum in Britain with Brexit, except we are still waiting since 1947 for that referendum be held. It’s never been held.

So today, Kashmir is a flashpoint between India and Pakistan. But there’s a further problem, a further problem, because in a war between India and China, China occupied part of Kashmir, and in a financial deal with Pakistan, Pakistan sold part of Kashmir to China. So we’ve got China involved, we’ve got India involved, and we’ve got Pakistan involved. And if I was briefing the British Foreign Secretary, the American Secretary of State on areas of the world which could blow up into major, major complications, then Kashmir is high on the list. And how sad, because in British India, Kashmir was meant to be the most beautiful place…

Well, before British India, everybody agreed, Indian and British alike, the Kashmir was the original Shangri-La. It was beautiful. I’m told by people who knew it under the Raj how beautiful it was. They said, you can’t imagine the beauty of Kashmir. And none of us can go. And potentially, potentially, this could be a war that escalates into a much larger war. And the United Nations didn’t act properly in 1947. Would you put money on the United Nations acting properly now? And if it does come to a huge clash, would America send troops in with the possibility of facing the Chinese? Would the Russians allow Pakistan to be taken by India? It’s a mess.

It’s a mess. And I go back to that issue of all of it being a mess. The solution of the partition, which was meant to resolve problems, has led to friction. There have been four major conflicts between India and Pakistan, 1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999. And it could break out at any point. There has been conflict between India and China over Kashmir, which led to the loss of part of Kashmir to China. And last year, 2020, there was serious conflict on the borders of Kashmir. Saw on your television screens, these extraordinary scenes of the soldiers marching up against each other as though it was some mediaeval contest, this macho marching up to the border and then, and more and beyond, shell being fired from one side to the other.

And of course, post-1947, as I said, in 1971, Pakistan split into two, and Bangladesh got out. It’s not easy, any of this. And one consequence is a British consequence. Lord Curzon, a former Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon said, the loss of India would mean that Britain dropped straight away to a third rate power. Now, I’m sure there’s many American historians who said, well, he got it absolutely right, because that’s what’s happened to Britain in 1947. The trouble is in Britain, no British government has accepted that. And now we’ve withdrawn from Brexit and we’re meant to be global power and all this.

The reality of what Curzon said is absolutely true. And that’s what Churchill feared. One immediate consequence is Attlee had to keep conscription going after the war. Now, Britain didn’t like conscription in the first place, and Attlee had to keep it going. Why? Because he could no longer call upon the Indian Army. And they hadn’t thought of that. And so that’s why Britain goes on with National Service, conscription for young men, something that was totally alien to how Britain looked at itself and looked at war and its army.

But we did, because we were petrified that if conflict came, we didn’t have enough troops, because we couldn’t, as we had in 1914, and as we did in 1940, call upon the Indian Army, they weren’t there any more. Now, I’ve got a little time and I want to, I want to do one important thing and then I want a conclusion to the talk. The important thing is something which non-British people might find difficult to understand is the relationship, I’m not talking about Pakistan, the relationship between Britain and India, because the odd quirk of history is that both to Britain and India, whether we like it or not, and most like it, are ties from the days of the Raj bind us still in numerous ways and not just cricket.

After all, we play cricket with Pakistan and Bangladesh, all the good it does is, but in terms of India, immigration into Britain from the subcontinent, from India in particular, has led to the present conservative cabinet having British Indian members of cabinet, cabinet ministers in the highest rank. British industry has a lot of British Indians running British industry. Indian business from India invests in Britain. We have bilateral trade. And the current political argument in Britain is that the present government didn’t lock down against the Indian variant of the coronavirus because we were in the middle of delicate negotiations on a bilateral trade agreement with India.

Our relationship is a strange one. India is not like anywhere else in our imperial story. It’s different. And it’s interesting that now the balance between Britain and India is becoming a balance between India and Britain. We are more dependent now on India than India is on us. We’ve only just stopped giving aid to India, which was nonsense, but it’s trade that’s at the basis. But there’s more than that.

My son worked for an British-Indian company at one time, and he went to India for the company, and he was in a meeting in Mumbai, and he was welcomed to the meeting by the Indians, and he said he was very pleased to be in Mumbai, and he was stopped. And the Indian said, “What do you mean, you are pleased to be in Mumbai?” He said, “I’m sorry, have I said something wrong?” He said, “Of course, it’s Bombay!” And he said, “You are just being British politically correct.” He said, “We still call it Bombay, only the government call it Mumbai.” Very interesting.

And then, when I was a child, every Christmas, when your Christmas cards arrive, the family open them, how’s aunt so and so, uncle this, your friends in Newcastle, whatever it might be. And my dad didn’t take much interest, to be honest, except one letter. And that was a letter that came from India, on thin air mail paper. And it was sent to him every Christmas by his Sikh who was much older than him, from the war. And he’d written to his Sikh every Christmas. And they exchanged details about their family and included a picture of the children and so on. Now, the Sikh didn’t have to do that, at all. No way did he have to do it, but he did.

And there’s a lovely story told in “Freedom at Midnight” by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, which I’m going to share with you about Lady Mountbatten, Edwina. Four days after her death, as requested in her will, she was buried at sea, off Spithead. Escorting the British frigate, HMS Wakeful, which took her to her burial place, was the Indian Frigate Trishul, a poignant parting gesture to the last of the men’s psalms from the nation she had so loved. That’s an extraordinary thing to do.

And then there’s a strange story. When Tony Blair was Prime Minister, he went on a visit to India and Cherie went with him, and she was interviewed by the British Press. And one of the things she said, which has stood out in my memory, she said, “I can’t believe how well we are treated after what we did in India.” And of course, she had no idea, that was a political standpoint, she thought, but it wasn’t true. This relationship is an extraordinary one, and it’s never going to end.

We eat Indian food here. The Indians have the equivalent of British public schools, which many of the elite go to in India. We have a relationship which is quite different, and that is one consequence which could not have been foreseen. So the question for the world, for Britain, for India and Pakistan, Bangladesh is can this good relationship be built upon between Britain and India for the benefit of both in the worlds to come? And can it be prevented, clashes between Pakistan and India, which could have serious effect on all of us? And can Britain and India do something about the environment which might help Pakistan and Bangladesh?

Now, I’m going to finish with a paragraph in the end of Barney White-Spunners book “Partition”. All of this is, all the books are on my blog, and he finishes his book really in a better way than I could, to end this short time with you, “Rather than to try to justify past actions, the British involvement in India should be seen for what it was, in the age of Empire, when European nations were using their comparative technological advantage to dominate the world, in which they saw nothing wrong or immoral, there was a successful venture that benefited British commerce and enriched her international standing. It did very little for the Indians. It could have ended so much better.

As with British involvement in many other parts of the globe, had it ended when it should have done, when the Empire was demonstrably over,” 1920s, “when it was demonstrably over and when subject peoples were demanding self-government,” ‘20s and '30s, “it did not. And when it was finally forced to close, it did so amid terrible bloodshed. We had stayed too long.”

I don’t think I can disagree with that. So I hope that there was just something in that you might not have heard of before. I hope I may have stimulated you to read some more. And I hope that it might make you, I don’t want to worry you about the situation in Kashmir, but that you’ll be aware of it when you read it in your press or you see it on television. So thanks very much for listening.

We’ve probably got some questions and comments, Judi, have we not?

• [Judi] Yes, William, go ahead and take a look at them if you see them.

Q&A and Comments

• Bernard from Cleveland in Ohio says, A movie by Deepa Mehta called “Earth” gives a good insight of the times, I think, around the separation into India and Pakistan. Thanks.

Q: Did the partition of India have any material effect on subsequent spread of Islam? A: No, I think the answer is definitely no on that. I think the issue of modern Islam in Pakistan is a different question, is nothing to do with partition, I would say.

Oh, somebody said their uncle was also in the army as a major in the war. My dad was a captain in the Hong Kong and Singapore Royal Artillery. There were lots of British… I take it that the person who put that, Carl Rose, I’d take it his father was British. He might have been American or Australian. It sounds like the Middle East, which has gone on for 70 years. Absolutely. It’s a very similar story. If you bring it down to basics, then take out all the sort of specific examples, you bring it down to basics, that’s it. The British withdraw from Palestine, which was not a withdraw, but should have been, et cetera, et cetera.

Yes. Yeah. Pity the British didn’t learn from this when they similarly abandoned Palestine in '48. Yeah, remember that there is other issues there, not least the issue that we were not, we only had a mandate in Palestine and we were in the control of the UN and the UN wouldn’t do anything.

No. Genocide is a term defined by the United Nations, which is wider than simply anti-Semitism. Whether you call what happened in India genocide, you must decide, but there were certainly people who were imprisoned because they were Hindu. There were certainly people burned to death because they were Muslim or Hindu by the other side, or Sikh.

• William, would you please, would you mind reading out the questions?

• Oh, yeah. Sure. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Sure.

• That you’re answering. Thank you.

• But I forget that other people perhaps can’t see the questions.

• No. No problem.

• The dividing by Britain in India cannot be called a genocide because nobody was imprisoned because they were Indian, Pakistanian, Hindu and burned to death. That’s simply not true. The same way, the problem in South Africa could not be called genocide. I don’t know which problem you are relating to, if it’s apartheid, no, it can’t be called genocide, but there was genocide by the Germans in German Southwest Africa, you remember.

Genocide is a term that is primarily Jew-hatred for no reason. No, it isn’t. Genocide is not defined in terms of antisemitism by the United Nations. What the Holocaust did was make the United Nations define genocide as a international crime, which they’ve done, but subsequently, people have been brought before international tribunals, not least because of the war in Yugoslavia, accused of genocide. So yeah, genocide… The one thing that isn’t covered legally is ethnic cleansing. There’s no definition of ethnic cleansing in international law, but genocide is.

Q: Now that we have the benefit of hindsight, what should Britain have done differently? A: Well, oh dear. The answer that I’ve read out to you just now from Barney White-Spunners book, was that we should have got out, we should have got out in 1920s and '30s, but had we done so, we would still have had the problem that we had in 1947, in my view, because we could never have overwritten this Muslim-Hindu problem. Before the British came, the Muslim Emperors had ruled in India as one and ruled ethnically. We had been even handed between all the parties. I’m not sure that there was anything, I mean, that’s a dreadful thing to say, maybe if we had gone slower and we had been more astute with the division of the Punjab and Bengal, but I’m not sure how we could have done that, and I don’t think the problems would’ve been any more solvable earlier. Not a very satisfactory answer, but I’m…

The Gurinder Chadha film “Viceroy’s House” is based upon the assertion partition was motivated not by concern for the Muslim and Hindu, in fact, but by the desire to secure to Pakistan enduring access to oil routes. I no, I don’t… No, no, no, no. I don’t believe that’s correct. I don’t buy that. It’s like it said that Mountbatten wanted to get out early because he wanted to be at the wedding in Westminster Abbey of Prince Philip and the present queen. I don’t buy that either. There is a story that partition could have been avoided, had Nehru agreed that Jinnah would’ve been the first leader of the united country, did not, and the die was cast. Had he agreed, the Hindus would not have followed Nehru. They would not have accepted it. And I wouldn’t have trust Jinnah as far as I could throw him, in terms of the negotiations. I don’t think that was ever on. How capable was United Kingdom, given they left three places in total from '48, most of which continued to hold those three countries today, 70 years later.

Q: Could things have been done differently instead of just rushing through things? A: Well, of course they could have been done differently. There are many similarities between Palestine and India, but there are major differences as well. In terms of Britain’s legal position, and by what is done in those countries themselves. The fact that it was an independent declaration of independence by Israel, what did not happen in India, we negotiated that, that was not negotiable then.

Q: Why did he appear to be Governor General rather than Prime Minister? Was it because he was gravely ill? A: The answer is it may well have been. He was gravely ill. He was dying. Gandhi’s role was immense in the 1930s. By the time we get to the independence period, post Second World War, Gandhi’s influences behind the scenes, and he’s… Gandhi’s really withdrawn from the arena of politics into a more philosophical world, Nehru and Jinnah are politicians to their fingertips. Gandhi is not, Gandhi is different than that. He’s not a key character at that point. As a firm believer in the separation of church and state, obviously not…

Q: Would it have been better solution to leave Muslims and Hindus mixed through the territory, having a secular government? A: That was never possible. Yes, of course, but that’s not possible. People who hold strong religious views, it’s no good telling them they should be secular or have a secular government. It doesn’t resolve, secular governments don’t resolve religious clashes. Think, oh, there’s lots of examples of secular governments which don’t resolve those problems. Yes, “Midnight’s Children”, another use of the word midnight, novel by Salman Rushdie powerfully presents this time period. Yes, absolutely correct. Tamil’s in the South. Yes, the south isn’t a problem. Southern India is not a problem. Southern India remained entirely peaceful. It’s not a problem. No, I can’t supplement with maps. I’ve only got an hour. I can’t fiddle around with maps on the screen, which people can’t see. Always bring an atlas, always have one at hand. I can’t bring maps. I would need much longer, and it would not be possible on a small screen to be able to do that satisfactorily. I’m sorry. It’s just one of the limitations of Zooming.

Q: Do I think that famine in Bengal in '43 was a factor hastening the demands for independence? A: The short answer is no, that famines were continuous. The interesting thing about the famine in Bengal, which is one of the things used by the left in Britain to attack Churchill with, the, at the time in India, in Bengal itself, the Muslim controlled government, devolved government in Bengal, the Muslim League, were accused of not acting firmly enough. The famine in Bengal is a complex issue, and it’s not simply Churchill didn’t send money, that’s not true, but I don’t, and your question, did it hasten independence? No, it didn’t. No, it didn’t.

Salman Rushdie said he thought that Kashmir could be the trigger for a third world war. Yes, I do as well. Yeah. I’m asked, do I agree? I do.

No, no, no compensation. Somebody’s asked a question about Israel and Palestine. I’m not talking about Israel and Palestine. I note your question.

You pretty well answer your own question. Edward, Sir Cyril Radcliffe. The man who did the map. The Sikhs… The Sikhs are so interesting. My father served with Sikhs. They fought a bitter war of independence when Britain tried to take over in the Punjab, but once they were conquered, they became extraordinary, rather like Gurkhas in the British army, the Sikh, you can always trust a Sikh. I was brought up, always trust Sikhs, and I still would absolutely 100% trust a Sikh. They have fared, at times they’ve not fared well in India to be truthful, but overall it’s not been worse than it has for them. That’s a difficult question. I think in the main, in Indian terms, it’s been okay. In European-American terms, perhaps the answer is different than that.

Q: How different might the timing of independent subcontinent be if Churchill had been Prime Minister? A: I dread to think, I honestly think Churchill would try to have delayed it. Now, he’s a bit past it by 1945, in terms of his age, in terms of his mental abilities by '45. He would’ve tried to delay it, I’d like to think that the cabinet would’ve told him not to, but the Conservative cabinet, when he came back to power in '51, were still in awe of him. Even though he, in modern parliaments, he pretty well lost it by '51. I dread to think what he would’ve done, and he certainly wouldn’t have sent Mountbatten. He regarded him Mountbatten as a complete idiot. There’s lots of stories about Mountbatten. I was going to tell you some, but there isn’t time. They’re all quite naughty stories.

Q: How many Indian troops? A: Oh, I haven’t got the figures. Huge numbers of Indian troops fought in both the First and Second World War for Britain, and in 1914, without the arrival of the Indian Army and the French North African army, then it’s almost certain that the Germans would’ve broken through to Paris in the autumn-winter of 1914.

Oh, did I say Northeast and Northwest around the wrong way. I am so sorry. It’s always difficult with Northeast. I’m sorry. It’s absolutely right, Janet and Michael, the Punjab and Kashmir are Northwest India and Bengal in Northeast. I’m sorry if I muddled that. My fault.

Somebody’s been twice to India to Nagaland, Assam, right across the northern sway, from Calcutta to Pakistan border, felt strong sense of our shared, Margaret, of our shared history. In so many respects, I felt both proud and ashamed, but the relationship, the influences are evident even in the villages. I visited the Governor’s House in Simla, now Shimla, and saw the table on which independence was signed. I think our relationship with India is quite a special one. Yes, I do as well.

No, we’re not still sending aid to India. We have stopped sending aid to India, I’m pleased to say. I’m not pleased to say we’ve stopped sending aid elsewhere. Yes, English is still the lingua franca in India, and that’s been an enormous benefit to India in terms of global trade, in terms of internet, in terms of all sorts of things. There are different, no… Indian Parliament based purely on religion or other political differences across the religions? That’s difficult to answer. I think-

• Hi, again.

• Sorry.

• Hi, it’s Wendy. I’m going to have to jump in and just say I want to just thank you.

• Oh, sorry. Have I gone talking too long?

• Not at all. Not at all. It’s just that Judi and I have to jump on… We just need… I just want to say thank you for an excellent presentation and also want to say that we’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg, so I, you know, I was just saying, I was just thinking now that we should reconvene and read and discuss how we take this topic forward because there’s so much to discuss.

• It is. An hour is always, one can only just present an introduction.

• Exactly.

• And people need to follow that through. It’s one of the reasons I can’t use maps, if I started using maps anyhow, it will take up so much time. And I don’t think it helps, a lot of older people-

• Of course.

• See on a small screen, but do have a look at my Kashmir map, which is on my blog with a piece about what’s happened in Kashmir last year. So, yeah. We always have to paint with a broad brush. And I hope that people will…

• Exactly.

• Just be a little more alerted to the situation when they read about it in their own country.

• Exactly. So, you know, I think that we could definitely spend more time on the partition, we could spend more time on the relationship between India and Pakistan and certainly Kashmir. So, you know, I know that-

• We’ll think about that.

• We can talk about that for next year, but, you know, after you’ve been away on your summer holiday.

• Yeah, I had to stop, for example, I couldn’t talk about the negotiations in the '20s and '30s, because if I did so, I wouldn’t get to partition. That was one of the problems.

• Exactly. Exactly.

• And nor did I go into the intricacies of a war and the other conflicts, because, again, it would’ve taken up far too much time. So-

• Exactly.

• It’s always, I’m sorry if I disappoint, but I’m always sorry, but there’s…

• You’re not disappointing.

• You have to make a choice.

• Oh, no, no.

• And the choice doesn’t always fit everyone, and there’s nothing one can do about that as a teacher. You just have to live with the criticism, and you just have to make what you think is the best choice. And other people make different choices.

• No, you know what? The thing is that there’s no disappointment. There’s only excitement. Because once you titillate the appetites, and one gives an overview, and we are a very small faculty, and we are making the decision. So it’s very easy for us to change, you know, the what we want to do.

• Yeah.

• You know?

• Yes, yes.

• So we’ll chat offline and then, you know, there’s so much to discuss and I know I’m also fascinated with India and exactly, so I think this is a brilliant, brilliant introduction of what to come and then we’ll…

• Thank you.

• So we can decide. Thank you very, very much. I just want to say thank you everybody for joining us and so much to look forward to. See you soon. Thank you, William.

• See you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye everyone.

• Enjoy the rest of the evening.

• Bye-bye.

• And to all our participants, yeah, enjoy the rest of your day and your evening. Thanks a lot. Bye.

• Thanks.