Freedom at Midnight (88 page)

Delhi, Lord Mountbatten and certain documents that the last viceroy found in his archives relative to the plot.

The account of Mountbatten's request to Gandhi to go to Calcutta is based on interviews with Mountbatten and his record of their conversation as well as interviews with Pyarelal Nayar, Brikshen Chandiwallah and K. Rangaswamy.

The account of Jinnah's departure for Karachi and his flight was reconstructed from interviews with his A.D.C.'s Admiral Ahsan and Wing Commander Ata Rabani and Colonel William Birnie. Lord Mountbatten's decision to hold back Lord Radcliffe's award until after independence was discussed with Lord Mountbatten, Lord Radcliffe and Sir George Abell. The quotes are from the Viceroy's last report to London. The earlier passage on how Lord Radcliffe worked is based on interviews with Lord Radcliffe and his LC.S. aide H. C. Beaumont.

The account of the farewell dinner at the Delhi Gymkhana Club is based on interviews with a number of those present

chapter 11:

WHILE THE WORLD SLEPT

The account of Gandhi's mission to Calcutta is based on interviews with Pyarelal Nayar, R. N. Bannerjee and Ram Goburbhun. Written sources include Mahatma Gandhi — The Last Phase; Harijan; and other contemporary newspaper accounts. The account of Mountbatten's ride through the streets of Karachi with Jinnah is based largely on an interview with the last viceroy. Written sources include Mission with Mountbatten and contemporary newspaper accounts.

The description of Independence night at the Khyber Pass, Lahore, New Delhi, Bombay, et cetera, comes from a great variety of sources. They include interviews with Lord Mountbatten, Alan Campbell-Johnson, Generals Yacoub Khan, Mes-servy, Lockhart, Bucher and Chaudhuri, Colonel Birnie, Brigadier Mohammed Idriss, R. E. W. Atkins, Anwar Ali, Khwaja Mohiuddin, Mrs. Sucheta Kripalani, who sang the Indian national anthem for the Constituent Assembly, H. V. R. Iyengar, Mrs. V. L. Pandit, General and Mrs. D. Misra, Dr. Sushila Nayar, Colonel Mohammed Sharif Khan, Rule Dean, W. H. Rich. Among the written sources employed were the official programs for the celebrations, contemporary newspaper accounts, special reports on the celebrations prepared by Lord and Lady Mountbatten, numerous letters and diaries made available to the authors. The story of Nehru's telephone call was recounted by Padmaja Naidu, his dinner guest that evening. The passage on the visit of the leaders to Mountbatten is based on his own recollections of the moment

CHAPTER 12:

"O LOVELY DAWN OF FREEDOM"

The descriptive passages on Benares and the village of Chatharpur are based on interviews and research in the two locations. The descriptions of the independence celebrations in Delhi as well as elsewhere in India on August 15 are based on interviews with Lord Allendale, Elizabeth Collins, Commodore Rusi Gandhi, Lieutenant Colonel Sir Martin Gilliat, Lieutenant Commander Howes, General Lockhart, Captain Scott, Duggal Singh, Indira Gandhi, Lord Mountbatten, Ram Gobur-bhun, Khushwant Singh, General Shahid Hamid, General Habibullah, Padmaja Naidu, Ahmed Zahur. Written sources include the Viceroy's final report to London, the diary of Captain Scott, letters written at the time by Elizabeth Collins, contemporary newspaper accounts, and the official programs. The account of Pamela Mountbatten's experiences is based on interviews with her and her Oral History Transcript of the incident on deposit at the Jawaharlal Nehru Library in New Delhi.

The story of the trains arriving in Amritsar was recounted by the station-master Chani Singh. The description of the raising of the R.S.S.S. flag in Poona is based on the account of the ceremony in the Hindu Rashtra of the time and an interview with the brother of Nathuram Godse, Gopal Godse. The Earl of Listowel described his visit to Balmoral without the missing seals. Sir George Abell provided the account of the visit to Clement Attlee. The meeting at which Lord Mountbatten presented the Radcliffe award to the Indian leaders was recreated from interviews with Lord Mountbatten and the minutes of the meeting itself. The description of Radcliffe's departure is based on interviews with Lord Radcliffe and H. C. Beaumont.

CHAPTERS 13 AND 14:

"OUR PEOPLE HAVE GONE MAD"; THE GREATEST MIGRATION IN HISTORY

The passages describing the intercommunal killing in the Punjab, the flight of the refugees, the train massacres, the rape and abduction of women from both communities are based primarily on particular experiences selected from those recounted by over four hundred refugees from both sides interviewed in the course of the research for this book. Wherever possible the personal experiences selected for use were those which could be authenticated or corroborated by a second source. Inter-

views with a number of other people, in addition to those refugees whose names are given in the text, were employed in constructing those passages in Chapters 13 and 14. They include Sir Chandulal Trivedi, the governor of the Indian half of the province; Major General M. S. Chopra, who supervised the military escort for the refugees bound for Pakistan from the Indian side of the border; General Raza, Shahid Hamid and Akhbar Khan of Pakistan: Lieutenant Colonel Nawab Sir Malik Khazar Khan Tiwana who also furnished a number of unpublished studies on the origins of the violence; Mr. G. D. Harrington Howes, Colonel A. D. Iliff. R. E. W. Atkins and Edward Behr. The written sources employed included the following: contemporary newspaper accounts; G. D. Khosla's Stern Reckoning, the most detailed Indian study of the upheavals; the minutes and records of the Emergency Committee; a detailed report on the refugee problem prepared for the St. John Ambulance Brigade by Lady Mountbatten; D. F. Karala's Freedom Must Not Stink; Moon's Divide and Quit; Campbell-Johnson's Mission with Mountbatten; Hodson's The Great Divide; Kuldip Nayar's Distant Neighbors. Also available is an excellent novel of the period, Khushwant Singh's Last Train to Pakistan.

The account of Gandhi's Miracle in Calcutta is based on interviews with Pyarelal Nayar, Brikshen Chandiwallah, Nirmal Kumar Bose and Ram Goburbhun, and on Pyarelal Nayar's Mahatma Gandhi — The Last Phase and contemporary newspaper accounts. The description of the tour of the Punjab by Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan is based on interviews with two of the men who accompanied them. H. V. R. Iyengar and Major General Dubey The passage relating to Mountbatten's summons to Delhi from Simla is based on, first, interviews with Lord Mountbatten and a confidential memo that he prepared at the time, and second, papers of V. P. Menon and interviews with his daughter and with H. V. R. Iyengar, who was with him when the government's senior civil servants realized that India was close to collapse.

The account of the Emergency Committee's initial session and its function is based on its minutes, Campbell-Johnson's Mission with Mountbatten, and interviews with Lord Mountbatten, C. H. Bhabha and H. V. R. Iyengar.

The account of the flight of Madanlal Pahwa and his subsequent encounters with Dr. Parchure and Vishnu Karkare is based on interviews with the three men. The story of Boota Singh and his daughter related in this chapter and the Epilogue is based on interviews with Rabia Sultan Qari, who became the foster mother of his daughter, and Lahore newspaper accounts of his trial and his death.

CHAPTER 15:

"KASHMIR—ONLY KASHMIR!"

The account of the lights fading during the Maharaja's De-wali celebration is based on an interview with his son Dr. Karan Singh and Mrs. Florence Lodge, a British resident of Srinagar. Jinnah's efforts to spend a vacation in Kashmir were noted at the time by Colonel Birnie in his diary. The account of how the Pakistan government came to plan its tribal invasion of Kashmir was furnished by General Akbar Khan, now Pakistan's ambassador to Prague, who was involved in the planning from the outset. The account of the invasion itself and the physical preparations for it were furnished by Sairab Khayat Khan and Colonel Mohammed Sharif Khan, who became physically involved at a later stage. The description of the telephone exchanges between the British officers commanding the two nations' armies was provided by Generals Mes-servy, Lockhart and Bucher. The Maharaja's flight was described by Dr. Karan Singh. The account of reactions in Delhi and V. P. Menon's flight to obtain the Maharaja's accession is based on interviews with Lord Mountbatten, Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, Sheikh Abdullah, Sir Alexander Symons, and Mrs. D. Misra, V. P. Menon's daughter, and on V. P. Menon's personal papers seen by the authors in Bangalore in 1973, and the minutes of the India Defense Committee, which decided to intervene after the Maharaja's accession. Two interesting accounts of the origins of the conflict have been written by the men responsible for the military operations on each side— How Slender the Thread, by India's General L. P. Sen; and Raiders in Kashmir, by General Akbar Khan. General Harbaksh Singh also provided an excellent and detailed account of the early military operations around Srinagar.

CHAPTER 16*

TWO BRAHMANS FROM POONA

A more extensive account of the source material on Gandhi's assassins will be found in the notes for Chapters 17-20. The description here of the opening of the Hindu Rashtra is from interviews with Gopal Godse and Vishnu Karkare, and from the paper's own account of the event. The police watch was revealed by the Kapur Commission.

The account of Gandhi's actions in Panipat is based on interviews with Pyarelal Nayar and witnesses in the city, and on Mahatma Gandhi — The Last Phase. The passage on Jinnah's

physical decline and his concerns in the autumn of 1947 is based on interviews with his former A.D.C. Admiral Ahsan and his Military Secretary Colonel Birnie, as well as on the latter's diary. The description of Lord Mountbatten's conversations with Gandhi at the close of the chapter is based on an interview with him and on his own records of it

chapter 17:

"LET GANDHI DIE"

The account of Gandhi's last fast is based first of all on two long interviews with his physician, Dr. Sushila Nayar, and on her notes made at the time. Also particularly helpful were Gandhi's secretary, Pyarelal Nayar, his close associate Brikshen Chandiwallah, and Gurucharan Singh, who served on his Delhi staff. Others interviewed for the passage included D. W. Mehra, Padmaja Naidu, Lord Mountbatten, and G. N. Sinha. Written sources include contemporary Indian newspaper accounts, particularly Harijan, Gandhi's own paper, and three books by his associates, Nayar's Mahatma Gandhi — The Last Phase, Chandiwallah's At the Feet of Bapu, and Manu's Last Glimpses of Bapu.

chapters 18, 19, 20:

THE VENGEANCE OF MADANLAL PAHWA; "WE MUST GET GANDHI BEFORE THE POLICE GET US"; THE SECOND CRUCIFIXION

Two of Gandhi's assassins, Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte, were hanged after their conviction in 1949. The man who motivated the killing, Veer Savarkar, died in 1966. The other members of the conspiracy—Gopal Godse, Vishnu Karkare, Madanlal Pahwa, Digamber Badge and Dattatraya Parchure—were all alive when research on this book began, the first three having served out their jail sentences. All were located and extensively interviewed. In addition, the authors brought Godse and Karkare back to Delhi for the first time since their trial. We returned them to all the places that they had visited while they were in the city on their two assassination attempts. The Retiring Room of the railroad station, the Birla Temple, the woods where they held their target practice, and finally the grounds of Birla House itself, where they re-enacted their murder. They also took the authors to a number of Godse and Apte's associates in Poona, the headquarters of their paper and other places they frequented. Gopal Godse also made available a biography that he has prepared in Mahratti of his brother.

Two of the police officers involved in the investigation of the conspiracy to murder Gandhi—Jamshid "Jimmy" Nagar-valla and D. W. Mehra—were also interviewed extensively. Nagarvalla made available the Bombay Police diary and his own case file. An officer who chose to remain anonymous offered the authors similar material on the Delhi investigation. The directors of the Nehru Library in New Delhi kindly made available the full transcript of the trial proceedings, which were restricted at the time because of N. Godse's highly emotional statement in his own defense. These constitute the sources on which the material relevant to the assassins and the police investigations in these chapters are based.

The account of Gandhi's plan to visit Pakistan is based on interviews with Jehangir Patel, Sushila and Pyarelal Nayar. His last days were described by those three as well as by Gurucharan Singh, Maniben Patel, who was with her father during his last talk with Gandhi, and Abdul Gani. Written sources include Mahatma Gandhi — The Last Phase; At the Feet of Bapu; and Last Glimpses of Bapu.

The description of his funeral and the arrangement for it are based on interviews with Lord Mountbatten, Pyarelal Nayar, Alan Campbell-Johnson, General Sir Roy Bucher, General J. N. Chaudhuri, Elizabeth Collins, Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw and numerous others. In addition to contemporary newspaper accounts, written sources include Mahatma Gandhi — The Last Phase and Mission with Mountbatten.

The account of the immersion of his ashes at Allahabad is based on an interview with Padmaja Naidu. Another view of it is available in Sheean's Lead, Kindly Light.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I—BOOKS

Abbas, K. Ahmad: A Report to Gandhi, Bombay: Hind

Kitabs, 1947. / Write as I Feel—I—The Atom Bomb,

II—Lahore. Ackerley, J. R.: Intermede Hindou. Paris: Gallimard,

1935. Ali, Chaudhri Muhammad: The Emergence of Pakistan.

New York: Columbia University Press, 1967. Anand, Balwant Singh: Cruel Interlude. India: Asia

Publishing House, 1961. Anaryan: A Group of Hindoo Stories, London: W. H.

Allen, 1881. Anwar, Muhammad: Jinnah Quaid-e-Azam, A Selected

Biography. Karachi: National Publishing House,

1970. Ashe, Geoffrey: Gandhi — A Study in Revolution. Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1968. Atal, Amarnath: The Maharaja of Jaijur — 1922-1947.

Allahabad: Allahabad Law Journal Press, n.d. Azad, Maulana Abdul Kalam: India Wins Freedom.

New York: Longmans, Green, 1960. Baig, M. R. A.: Muslim Dilemma in India. Delhi: Vikas