Freedom at Midnight (28 page)

While the Alwar case was exceptional, it was not the only incident to have troubled relations between India's puritanical British rulers and their extravagant vassals. Side by side with the accounts of the prince's vices, the records of those other contretemps disappeared in Sir Conrad Corfield's bonfires.

The gravest of them had been occasioned by a Maharaja of Baroda. Displeased that the British should have accorded their Resident in his state, an obscure, and in the Maharaja's eyes rather common, colonel a gun salute similar to his own, the prince ordered a pair of cannon in solid gold to give his salute a resonance more regal than the colonel's. The Resident, angered by the prince's gesture, forwarded London a distinctly unfavorable report on Baroda's morals, accusing him of enslaving the women in his harem.

Furious, Baroda summoned his best astrologers and holy men to propose a suitable means of getting rid of the unwanted colonel and a proper conjuncture of the stars under which to do it. Their recommendation was poison by diamond dust. The prince selected one the size of an acorn, a dimension held to be suitable for a man of the colonel's rank, and his astrologers ground it into powder.

The highly indigestible result was slipped into the colonel's evening meal one night, but before it could have the desired effect, the pain it produced landed the colonel in a hospital, where the offending potion was pumped from his stomach.

The attempted murder of a representative of the Crown became an affair of state. The Maharaja's judges were not impressed by the assurances of his Brahman priests that they had duly performed all the rites necessary to assure the reincarnation of the colonel's soul nor those of his jeweler, who declared the value of the diamond unwillingly consumed by the Resident "corresponded exactly to that of an English colonel." The Maharaja was deposed and sent into exile for his failure to properly administer a state dependent upon the British Crown.

His exile was avenged by his friend and fellow ruler the Maharaja of Patiala. When the viceroy who had signed the exile decree visited his state, the prince ordered the gunners who would fire the thirty-one-gun salute due the representative of the King-Emperor to stuff their cannon with a powder ration so small the envoy of Imperial England would be honored by an explosion "not louder than a child's firecracker."

The destruction of these records was not the only action resulting from Corfield's visit to London. Other actions were less picturesque but of potentially far greater importance. From all over India, letters began to flow into

New Delhi from various princes informing the government of British India of their intention to cancel the agreements that allowed Indian railways, posts, telegraph and other facilities to function in their territories. It was a tactical gesture meant to underline the princes' bargaining power in the coming showdown, but the vista they opened was appalling: an India in which trains couldn't run, mail couldn't be delivered and telecommunications couldn't function properly.

The lusterless eyes of Robert Clive gazed down from the great oil painting upon the wall of the seven Indian leaders filing into the Viceroy's study. Representatives of India's 400 million human beings, those millions whom Gandhi called "miserable specimens of humanity with lusterless eyes," they entered Mountbatten's study on this morning of June 2, 1947, to inspect the deeds that would return to their peoples the continent whose conquest the British general had opened two centuries before. The papers, formally approved by the British Cabinet, had been brought from London by the Viceroy just forty-eight hours before.

One by one, they took their places at the circular table in the center of the room: Congress, represented by Nehru, Patel and its president, Acharya Kripalani; the Moslem League by Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan and Rab Nishtar. Baldev Singh was present as spokesman for the six million people who would be more dramatically affected by the words about to be spoken than any others in India, the Sikhs.

Against the wall sat Mountbatten's two key advisers Lord Ismay and Sir Eric Mieville. At the center of the table was the Viceroy. An official photographer hastily recorded their gathering for history. Then, in a silence interrupted only by the rasp of nervous throats being cleared, a secretary set before each man a manila folder containing a copy of the plan.

For the first time since he had arrived in Delhi, Mount-batten was now being forced to abandon his head-to-head diplomacy for a round-table conference. He had decided, however, that he would do the talking. He was not going to run the risk of throwing the meeting open for a general discussion that might degenerate into an acrimonious shout-

ing match that could destroy his elaborately wrought plan.

Aware of the poignancy and historic nature of their gathering, he began by noting that during the past five years he had taken part in a number of momentous meetings at which the decisions that had determined the fate of the war had been taken. He could remember no meeting, however, at which decisions had been taken whose impact upon history had been as profound as would be the impact of the decision before them.

Briefly, Mountbatten reviewed his conversations since arriving in Delhi, stressing the terrible sense of urgency they had impressed on him.

Then, for the record and for history, he formally asked Jinnah one last time if he was prepared to accept Indian unity as envisaged by the Cabinet Mission Plan. With equal formality, Jinnah replied that he was not, and Mountbatten moved on to the matter at hand. Briefly, he reviewed the details of his plan. The dominion-status clause that had won Winston Churchill's support was not, he stressed, a reflection of a British desire to keep a foot in the door beyond her time, but to assure that British assistance would not be summarily withdrawn if it was still needed. He dwelt on Calcutta, on the coming agony of the Sikhs.

He would not, he said, ask them to give their full agreement to a plan parts of which went against their principles. He asked only that they accept it in a peaceful spirit and vow to make it work without bloodshed.

His intention, he said, was to meet with them again the following morning. He hoped that before that, before midnight, all three parties, the Moslem League, Congress and the Sikhs, would have indicated their willingness to accept the plan as a basis for a final Indian settlement. If this was the case, then he proposed that he, Nehru, Jinnah and Baldev Singh announce their agreement jointly to the world the following evening on All India Radio. Clement Attlee would make a confirming announcement from London.

"Gentlemen," he concluded, "I should like your reaction to the plan by midnight."

One unspoken fear had flown back to Delhi with Louis Mountbatten, one concern marring his satisfaction with his

achievements in London and his "enormous optimism" for the future. It was that "that unpredictable little Mahatma Gandhi" was going to go against him.

It was a prospect that the Viceroy dreaded. He had already developed a genuine affection for his "dejected little sparrow." The idea that he, the professional warrior, the Viceroy, should have to face the apostle of non-violence in a showdown over the future of the nation that Gandhi symbolized to the world was appalling.

It was a very real prospect. If Jinnah had been the man who had destroyed his hopes of keeping India united, Gandhi was the man who could destroy his hopes of dividing it. Since his arrival in India, Mountbatten had subtly striven to draw to him the Congress leaders, so that, in case of a showdown, he could hope to neutralize the Mahatma for a brief but vital hour.

The task had been easier than he had expected. "I had the most curious feeling," Mountbatten declared, recalling that period, "that they were all behind me, in a way, against Gandhi. They were encouraging me to challenge him, in a sense, on their behalf."

But as Mountbatten well realized, his unpredictable sparrow had greater resources at his command than the leaders of the Party. He had the Party itself. He had the millions of four-annas* members who worshipped him, and he had, above all, his uncommon skill at galvanizing those masses into action. If he chose to go over the heads of the politicians and appeal directly to India's masses, he could force a terrible trial of strength between the Viceroy, Nehru and Patel on one hand, and his own towering spiritual presence on the other.

Publicly, there had been every indication that he was preparing to do just that. On the day when Mountbatten's York had left London carrying the Viceroy and his plan to divide the subcontinent back to India, Gandhi had told his evening prayer meeting, "Let the whole nation be in flames; we will not concede one inch of Pakistan."

Privately, however, the month that had elapsed since the decision of the Working Committee had been a period of anguish, turmoil and doubt for Gandhi. Every instinct, every fiber of his being told him that partition was wrong. Yet, not only did he sense that the Congress leadership

* One fifth of a rupee, the annual dues of the Congress Party at the time.

was drifting away, but, for almost the first time, he was . not sure the masses of India were ready to answer his call.

Walking the streets of Delhi early one morning, one of his workers said to him, "In the hour of decision you are not in the picture. You and your ideals have been given the go-by."

"Yes," Gandhi said bitterly in reply, "everybody is eager to garland my photos and statues. But nobody wants to follow my advice."

A few days later, Gandhi had awakened by mistake at half past three, half an hour before his morning prayer. He had resumed his practice of sleeping with his great-niece Manu. It was a practice that he would continue until his death. Lying beside his straw pallet on the floor of their New Delhi sweeper's hut, Manu listened as Gandhi agonized alone in the darkness.

"Today I find myself alone," he said, his voice so low it was a whisper to the night. "Even Patel and Nehru think I'm wrong, and peace is sure to return if partition is agreed upon. . . . They wonder," he said, "if I have not deteriorated with age." There was a long pause, then Gandhi sighed and whispered. "Maybe all of them are right and I alone am floundering in the darkness."

Again there was a long silence, and then Manu heard a last phrase slip from his lips. "I shall perhaps not be alive to witness it," he said, "but should the evil I apprehend overtake India and her independence be imperiled, let posterity know the agony this old soul went through thinking of it."

The "old soul" who uttered these words was to enter the Viceroy's study at 12:30 p.m., June 2, ninety minutes after the leaders, to give voice to the most awaited and most important Indian reaction that Mountbatten would hear to his plan. His presence had hung over every minute of the earlier meeting, which Gandhi had refused to attend because he was not himself an officer of Congress. Dreading the words he was about to hear, wondering if the unpredictable prompting of Gandhi's inner voice would set them on a collision course, Mountbatten awaited Gandhi's arrival.

Gandhi, for whom punctuality was almost a fetish, entered the room precise to the minute as the gold clock on Mountbatten's mantelpiece softly chimed twelve-thirty.

Mountbatten rose from his desk and walked across the room to greet him, a smile and a hearty welcome on his lips. As he did, he stopped, stunned, halfway. Gandhi's reply was to press the index finger of his right hand to his lips like a mother hushing a child. At that sight, a wave of relief, tinged with humor, swept over the Viceroy. Thank God, he thought, a day of silence!

It was Monday. The voice that might have summoned the Indian masses against Mountbatten was stilled as it had been every Monday for years in response to Gandhi's vow to observe a day of total silence once a week to ease the strains on his vocal cords. Mountbatten would not have the answer he so impatiently waited for this June morning.

Gandhi settled into an armchair and drew from under the folds of his loincloth a sheaf of dirty, used envelopes and a pencil stub barely two inches long. Gandhi refused to waste even a scrap of paper. He himself scissored up the envelopes in which his mail arrived, turning them into neat little note pads, which he proceeded to cover from top to bottom with his scrawl.

When Mountbatten had finished explaining his plan, Gandhi licked the lead of his pencil stub and began to set down on the back of an old envelope a first enigmatic reaction to what were the most important and certainly most heartbreaking words he would hear during his lifetime. His writing finally covered the backs of five old envelopes, and when he left, Mountbatten carefully preserved them for posterity.

*Tm sorry I can't speak," Gandhi had written. "When I took the decision about the Monday silence I did reserve two exceptions, i.e., about speaking to high functionaries on urgent matters or attending upon sick people. But I know you do not want me to break my silence.

"There are one or two things I must talk about, but not today. If we meet each other again, I shall speak,"

With that, he left the Viceroy's study.

The long corridors of Viceroy's House were dark and silent. Only an occasional white-robed servant off on some errand drifted like a ghost along their carpets. In Louis Mountbatten's study, however, the lights still burned, illu-

minating the last meeting of his harrowing day. He stared at his visitor with uncomprehending disbelief. Congress had indicated in time their willingness to accept his plan. So, too, had the Sikhs. Now the man it was designed to satisfy, the man whose obdurate, unyielding will had forced partition on India, was temporizing. It was, in a sense, Mohammed AH Jinnah's day of silence, too. Everything Jinnah had been striving for for years was there waiting only his acknowledgment. For some mysterious reason, Jinnah simply could not bring himself this night to utter the word that he had made a career refusing to pronounce—"y es."

Inhaling deeply one of the Craven A's that he chainsmoked in his jade holder, Jinnah kept insisting that he could not give an indication of the Moslem League's reaction to Mountbatten's plan until he had put it before the League's Council, and he needed at least a week to bring its members to Delhi.