Free India After Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha Page B

an empire built over two centuries was poorly conceived. In the summer of 1947 the man occupying the hottest of hot seats was the governor of the still undivided Punjab, Sir Evan Jenkins. In early May Jenkins wrote to Mountbatten urging him to ‘reconsider the terms of any early announcement embodying a solution of the Indian political problem. In the Punjab we are going to be faced with a complete refusal of the communities to cooperate on any basis at all. It would clearly be futile to announce a partition of the Punjab which no community would accept.’ 14 The decision was made regardless, and the governor was left with thet task of maintaining law and order while the Punjab was divided. On 30 July he wrote to Mountbatten again, explaining that the prospect of Independence with Partition evoked anger rather than enthusiasm. The Muslims had hoped for the whole of the Punjab, whereas the Sikhs and Hindus were fearful that they would lose Lahore. ‘It would be difficult enough’, archly commented the governor, ‘to partition with in six weeks a country of 30 million people which has been governed as a unit for 98 years, even if all concerned were friendly and anxious to makeprogress.’ 15
    Jenkins did in fact ask several times for more troops and for a ‘Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron’. One reason there were too fewtroops available to deal with rioters was that they were busy guarding the paranoid rulers, who were convinced that British civilians would be attacked as soon as the decision to leave was made public. This feeling was widespread among all sections of Europeans in India: among officers, priests, planters, and merchants. In the summerof1946, a young English official wrote to his family that ‘we shall virtually have the whole country against us (for long enough at all events to wipe out our scattered European population) before the show becomes, as inevitably it will, a communal scrap between Hindusand Muslims’. 16
    To make the protection of British lives the top priority was pretty much state policy. In February 1947 the governor of Bengal said that his ‘first action in the event of an announcement of a date for withdrawal of British power . . . would be to have the troops “standing to” and prepare for a concentration of outlying Europeans at very short notice as soon as hostile reactions began to showthemselves’. 17 In fact, in the summer of 1947 white men and women were the safest people in India. No one was interested in killing them. 18 But their insecurity meant that many army units were placed near European settlements instead of being freed for riot control elsewhere.
    The instinct of self-preservation also lay behind the decision to postpone the Punjab boundary award until after the date of Independence. On 22 July, after a visit to Lahore, Lord Mountbatten wrote to Sir Cyril Radcliffe asking himto hurry things up, for ‘every extra day’ would lessen the risk of disorder. The announcement of the boundary award before Independence would have allowed movements of troops to be made in advance of the transfer of power. The governor of Punjab was also very keen that the award be announced as soon as it was finalized. As it happened, Radcliffe was ready with the award on 9 August itself. However, Mountbatten now changed his mind, and chose to make the award public only after the 15th. His explanation for the delay was strange, to say the least: ‘Without question, the earlier it was published, the more the British would have to bear responsibility for the disturbances which would undoubtedly result.’ By the same token, ‘the later we postponed publication, the less would the inevitable odium react upon the British’. 19
    As a rule, one must write of history only as it happened, not how it might have happened. Would amore extended time frame – an announcement in April 1947 that the British would quit in a year’s time – have allowed for a less painful process of division? Would