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Freedom at Midnight: Inspiration for the major motion picture Viceroy’s House
Dominique Lapierre
Larry Collins
The electrifying story of India’s struggle for independence, told in this classic account (first published in 1975) by two fine journalists who conducted hundreds of interviews with nearly all the surviving participants – from Mountbatten to the assassins of Mahatma Gandhi.This edition does not include illustrations.On 14 August 1947 one-fifth of humanity claimed their independence from the greatest empire history has ever seen. But 400 million people were to find that the immediate price of freedom was partition and war, riot and murder. In this superb reconstruction, Collins and Lapierre recount the eclipse of the fabled British Raj and examine the roles enacted by, among others, Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Mountbatten in its violent transformation into the new India and Pakistan.This is the India of Jawaharlal Nehru, heart-broken by the tragedy of the country’s division; of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a Moslem who drank, ate pork and rarely entered a mosque, yet led 45 million Moselms to nationhood; of Gandhi, who stirred a subcontinent without raising his voice; of the last viceroy, Mountbatten, beseeched by the leaders of an independent India to take back the powers he’d just passed to them.
FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT
INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE
VICEROY’S HOUSE
Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_f12af838-4be6-517e-a2ce-696190b8ecba)
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://www.williamcollinsbooks.com/)
This ebook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017
Copyright © Larry Collins and Pressinter S.A. 1975, 1997
The Authors assert the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
Cover artwork: Pathé Productions Limited
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Source ISBN: 9780008247782
Ebook Edition © October 2016 ISBN: 9780007381296
Version: 2017-03-06
EPIGRAPH (#ulink_4ac5206f-3e39-5c84-9cb8-2d5798e6a8ee)
‘The responsibility for governing India has been placed by the inscrutable design of providence upon the shoulders of the British race.’
RUDYARD KIPLING
‘The loss of India would be final and fatal to us. It could not fail to be part of a process that would reduce us to the scale of a minor power.’
WINSTON CHURCHILL
to the House of Commons,
February 1931
‘Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge … At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance …’
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
to the Indian Constituent Assembly,
New Delhi, August 14, 1947
CONTENTS
COVER (#u46f9c626-6c66-5bbf-bf79-cbee2cf0946c)
TITLE PAGE (#u5c22c66f-ca94-5d50-b550-8f0a555d27fb)
COPYRIGHT
EPIGRAPH
LIST OF MAPS (#u4deee823-2b5f-59c1-96dc-c6862007c956)
PREFACE (#ulink_03c9965e-7528-57b4-84bb-c032c8890ae0)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_8ce9b9dd-af45-51a6-922e-bd0540457420)
1 ‘A Race Destined to Govern and Subdue’ (#ulink_f24ba63a-c2a8-54c1-adf9-4f2ec9016068)
2 ‘Walk Alone, Walk Alone’ (#ulink_f0a954da-64bd-51f4-928a-3f883ad466ac)
3 ‘Leave India to God’ (#ulink_dcd27444-1f6d-51f7-bad1-fedc0eb5f0e8)
4 A Last Tattoo for the Dying Raj (#ulink_a8cee464-80cc-501a-8140-eac30610008e)
5 An Old Man and his Shattered Dream (#ulink_5f9d6677-a96c-52f1-9593-bb7318ac2338)
6 A Precious Little Place (#ulink_8f353adf-bb68-5f72-89f5-c8b5af194814)
7 Palaces and Tigers, Elephants and Jewels (#ulink_e7419334-efca-5436-bcaf-e87c04c2ab07)
8 A Day Cursed by the Stars (#ulink_5d216c92-32df-59a0-ac35-c9e409a88afd)
9 The Most Complex Divorce in History (#ulink_3ed2b52f-2f94-5019-9281-bda027366f7b)
10 ‘We Will Always Remain Brothers’ (#ulink_4ef6b5c6-f0a1-5276-846c-17892ccf8ff6)
11 While the World Slept (#ulink_db13dca1-c1db-5ebc-a513-a766cc72cc0e)
12 ‘Oh Lovely Dawn of Freedom’ (#ulink_0925f186-0302-5637-81bd-1aa61b05c432)
13 ‘Our People Have Gone Mad’ (#ulink_15866e18-b9e8-5273-97b6-3c16662a5e3f)
14 The Greatest Migration in History (#ulink_69b93edd-d160-539d-9e6f-0a15dd0505db)
15 ‘Kashmir – only Kashmir!’ (#ulink_4b0d630e-a65b-56a0-8805-73c9d0426cbe)
16 Two Brahmins from Poona (#ulink_39b82adb-fc52-5ab1-8ba0-54762fd68cb6)
17 ‘Let Gandhi Die!’ (#ulink_f98bb834-c7d7-5999-aacd-54844bfb15d9)
18 The Vengeance of Madanlal Pahwa (#ulink_4a0b732d-012b-5e70-a160-9c163d353810)
19 ‘We Must Get Gandhi Before the Police Get Us’ (#ulink_5c418d42-a354-5182-9d7a-464bb1dfb2d4)
20 The Second Crucifixion (#ulink_eb0ef808-0372-5ac3-b6ab-04e57e3895a0)
EPILOGUE (#ulink_896eb55f-7433-5eab-8b61-41a30edd3f3c)
WHAT THEY BECAME (#ulink_7bdcb4fa-4eb9-5888-aaa8-775700f67044)
BIBLIOGRAPHY (#ulink_293b7ace-ff08-5fe7-9851-ac117522842f)
INDEX (#ulink_32737691-5106-54b1-86d9-32ecf814f265)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#ulink_b118b0ab-282b-5295-abed-6271ccb03a81)
ABOUT THE AUTHORS (#ulink_012988ab-8612-5036-822b-8fb92302407f)
NOTES (#ulink_e64267f7-7b47-52a0-8b7d-62bbc2b9193d)
ALSO BY THE AUTHORS
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#ulink_b000c3a4-1280-5160-9818-ebf5bd3dcff3)
LIST OF MAPS (#ulink_79d5ed92-ee2f-511c-9338-9e926f954230)
India: before the transfer of power, and on the day of Partition (#u9bc6d0ec-7eb2-56a2-8c8d-6880c15f7dea)
The Punjab
Bengal
Kashmir
PREFACE (#ulink_d925ec62-0939-512a-8539-6c5da49f64e1)
In each passing century there are a few defining moments of which it can truly be said: ‘Here history was made’ or ‘Here mankind’s passage through the ages took a new direction or turned towards a new horizon.’ Such a moment occurred on the morning of 28 June 1914 when Gavrilo Princip stepped from the crowds in Sarajevo to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand and set Europe on the road to the slaughterhouse of the First World War, or again on that winter day in 1942 in Chicago when Enrico Fermi ushered in the Atomic Age with the first nuclear chain reaction.
Of equal importance in the history of our fading century was yet another moment, this one just seconds after the midnight of 14–15 August 1947 when the Union Jack, emblazoned with the Star of India, began its final journey down the flagstaff of Viceroy’s House, New Delhi. For the last retreat of that proud banner proclaimed far more than just the end of the British Raj and the independence of 400 million people, at the time one-fifth of the population of the globe. It also heralded the approaching end of the Age of Imperialism, of those four and a half centuries of history during which the white, Christian heirs of Europe held most of the planet in their thrall. A new world was coming into being that night, the world that will go with us across the threshold of the next millennium, a world of awakening continents and peoples, of new and often conflicting dreams and aspirations.
High drama it was, and what a cast of characters stood centre stage that night! Admiral of the Fleet Lord Louis Mountbatten, Earl of Burma, the last Viceroy, sent out to Delhi to yield up the finest creation of the British Empire, proclaimed in the name of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria. Jawaharlal Nehru, a man of impeccable taste, breeding and fastidious intelligence, destined to become the first leader of the tumultuous Third World. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, cool, austere, polite to a fault, but determined to force on the departing British the formation of a new Islamic nation – while savouring nightly the forbidden pleasures of a whisky and soda.
And, towering above the others, Mohandas Karamchand ‘Mahatma’ (Great Soul) Gandhi, the frail prophet of nonviolence who had hastened the end of the empire on which the sun was never to set by the simple expedient of turning the other cheek. In an age when television did not exist, radios were rare and most of his countrymen were illiterate, he proved a master of communications because he had a genius for the simple gesture that spoke to his countrymen’s souls. Surely, as historians and editors begin to choose their candidates for Man or Woman of the Century, his will be a name high on their lists.
Looming as the backdrop to that dramatic moment was the contrast between two Indias. First, the India of the imperial legend dying that night, of Bengal Lancers and silk-robed maharajas, tiger hunts and green polo maidans, royal elephants caparisoned in gold, haughty memsahibs and bright young officers of the Indian Civil Service donning their dinner jackets to dine in solitary splendour in tents in the midst of a steaming jungle. Then there was the new India coming into formal existence with the approaching dawn, a nation often beset by famine and frustration, struggling towards modernity and industrial power through the burden of her multiplicity of peoples, cultures, tongues and religions.
Those were the attractions and challenges which determined us to write Freedom at Midnight. The publication of the book’s original edition in 1975 was blessed by a phenomenon particularly gratifying to authors – enormous popular success accompanied by wide critical acclaim. It inspired, according to screenwriter John Briley, much of his Academy Award-winning script for Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi. A bestseller in Europe, the United States and Latin America, the book’s most significant impact was, understandably, on the Indian sub-continent. It was translated into every Indian dialect in which books are published, an accolade once reserved for authors such as Charles Dickens or Victor Hugo. It further received the flattering, if illegal, compliment of imitation in the form of at least 34 pirated editions. In Pakistan, however, an embarrassed government banned the book. Why? We mentioned the indisputable, human failing of the Islamic nation’s founder – he was not averse to eating a slice of bacon with his morning eggs.
In reviewing our original text for this new fiftieth anniversary edition, we found little that we felt demanded revision or rewriting. We did, however, feel that in view of the half-century which has passed since the events described in the book and the years since its initial publication, there were some parts of the story which merited an updating. To do that, we returned to our thirty hours of tape-recorded interviews with Lord Mountbatten and the other original sources which underlie the book.
As India and Pakistan mark the fiftieth anniversary of their independence, the antagonism which has governed their relationship for half a century continues unabated. Both countries now possess nuclear weapons and have threatened to employ them if menaced, making the sub-continent one of the most potentially dangerous regions on earth. Each nation regularly accuses the other of fomenting terrorism on its territory, India seeing the hand of Pakistan behind the guerrilla movement in Kashmir, and Pakistan accusing India of being behind the recent urban violence in Karachi and parts of the Punjab.
At the heart of the dispute between them is, of course, the intractable problem of the lovely Vale of Kashmir, whose overwhelmingly Moslem population lives under increasingly repressive Indian rule. The United Nations has called repeatedly for a plebiscite on the area’s future, a referendum which would almost certainly result in an overwhelming majority for either independence or union with Pakistan. What makes the problem so intractable, however, is the near-certainty that any Indian government which would even contemplate either of those possibilities would risk unleashing violence by Hindu militants on India’s Moslem minority, violence that would probably far exceed anything Kashmir has witnessed to date.
Lord Mountbatten is blamed by most Pakistanis for Kashmir’s post-independence decision to join the dominion of India rather than Pakistan. The accusation is, in fact, both unfair and untrue. On the contrary, Mountbatten probably came closer than anyone has since to effecting a peaceful solution to the problem. With considerable difficulty, he extracted from India’s political leaders Vallabhbhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru a pledge to accept a decision by Kashmir’s Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh to join his state to Pakistan. (Under the terms governing the transfer of power, the rulers of India’s princely states were to accede to the dominion either of India or of Pakistan, taking into account the desires of the majority of their populations.)
Armed with that agreement, Mountbatten flew to Srinagar shortly before 15 August, determined to convince Singh to join his state to Pakistan. He urged that course of action on the Maharaja while driving in his station-wagon for a day’s trout fishing in the Trika River.
‘Hari Singh,’ he told the prince, ‘you’ve got to listen to me. I have come up here with the full authority of the government of the future dominion of India to tell you that if you decide to accede to Pakistan because the majority of your population is Moslem, they will understand and support you.’
Singh refused. He told Mountbatten he wanted to become the head of an independent nation. The Viceroy, who considered Singh ‘a bloody fool’, replied: ‘You just can’t be independent. You are a landlocked country. You’re oversized and underpopulated. Your attitude is bound to lead to strife between India and Pakistan. You’re going to have two countries at daggers drawn for your neighbours. You’ll end up becoming a battlefield, that’s what will happen. You’ll lose your throne and your life, too, if you’re not careful.’
Singh persisted, however. He refused to meet officially with Mountbatten again during the Viceroy’s visit. Independence Day came and went and still Hari Singh vacillated, making no official decision on Kashmir’s future. When tribesmen organized and armed by Pakistan descended on his capital, Srinagar, later that autumn, Singh sent out an SOS for help to New Delhi. At that point, it is true, Mountbatten, now Governor-General of the new Dominion of India, told Nehru that he could not legally order Indian troops into Kashmir unless the Maharaja signed a formal act acceding to India. An emissary was dispatched to Srinagar with an act of accession. Singh signed it in great haste and Indian troops were airlifted to Kashmir. They are still there today, and the problem born that autumn day continues to poison relations between the two nations.
Many readers of Freedom at Midnight noted that we did not mention in its pages the oft-cited rumours of a love affair between Lady Edwina Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru. Our decision not to invoke those rumours was deliberate. While there is absolutely no doubt that a special bond of affection united Nehru and Lady Mountbatten, there was no evidence then nor is there any now that their relationship was anything other than platonic. Nehru’s own sister, Mme V.L. Pandit, volunteered to us in a conversation that had no bearing whatsoever on the Nehru – Edwina relationship that her brother had become sexually impotent towards the end of his marriage. That condition, she said, caused the end of the marriage and plagued Nehru for the rest of his life. Given the premium then put on masculine sexuality in Indian society, we found it very difficult to imagine that a sister would lie about such a matter involving a beloved brother. Furthermore, the valet who cared for Nehru’s official bungalow during two visits Lady Mountbatten paid to India’s Prime Minister after independence swore he had seen no evidence whatsoever that the couple had shared a bedroom.
Mountbatten did volunteer that he discussed with his wife the secrets of his continuing negotiations with India’s leaders and that, on occasion, he used her as a vehicle to pass information informally to Nehru which he could not transmit to him officially.
In the years which followed the publication of Freedom at Midnight we, the authors, were on occasion accused of being pro-Mountbatten in its pages. To that charge we plead guilty. In general, there were two major criticisms levelled at the last Viceroy: that he moved too fast in handing over power to India and Pakistan in August 1947, and that he did not do enough to prevent the terrible slaughters which followed that event.
No one, of course, will ever know how many people died in those awful weeks. Mountbatten preferred to use the figure 250,000 dead, an estimate undoubtedly tinged with some wishful thinking. Most historians of the period place the figure at half a million. Some put it as high as two million.
Whatever that tragic toll, with one exception no one in authority in India at the time foresaw a calamity of such magnitude. In the course of our work, we read all the weekly reports submitted to the Viceroy by the governors of India’s provinces. Those officials, men like Sir Evan Jenkins in the Punjab and Sir Olaf Caroe in the North West Frontier Province, represented the best and wisest products of British rule in India, the mandarins of the Indian Civil Service. They were advising a man whose Indian experience was counted in months, not years. Yet none of their reports foresaw a wave of violence even remotely comparable to that which followed Partition.
India and Pakistan’s political leaders – Nehru, Patel, Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan – urged Mountbatten with one voice to transfer power to their hands just as swiftly as possible. Those men had been agitating and preparing for the exercise of power for years. Nothing was going to delay them in getting their hands on that power. Whatever their innermost thoughts may have been, all of them minimized in their recorded conversations with Mountbatten the dangers of the coming Partition of India and vastly overstated their abilities to deal with any troubles which might break out. Only one voice foresaw the dimensions of the tragedy which was about to overwhelm the sub-continent. That was Gandhi’s, and no one in mid-summer 1947 was listening to the prophet of non-violence.
‘What went wrong’, Mountbatten admitted to us, ‘was this sheer, simultaneous reaction which nobody foresaw. No one predicted millions of people would pull up stakes and change sides. No one.’
What, we asked him, would he have done differently had some authoritative voice made such a prediction?
