The King's cousin spent hours on end in blasting the Pakistan scheme as impractical and unworkable and in persuading the Muslim League President to accept the British Cabinet Mission's May 1946 plan for a unified federation of India. The Quaid could not entrust the fate of the infant State of Pakistan to a person who initially hated the very idea of the partition of the subcontinent and who was openly committed to the Hindu Congress and its leading light, Pandit Nehru, whose animus for Jinnah was blatant.
The British Government's official records of the 1947 partition of the subcontinent, which were published in the 1970s and 1980s, and the memorabilia of some of the key players of that exciting vintage, contain heaps of irrefutable evidence in support of Jinnah's apprehensions that Mountbatten, as the common Governor-General of the two newly-independent Dominions of Pakistan and India, may not be fair and impartial towards Pakistan and that bigger India's crafty Nehru may manipulate him to wreck Pakistan's future and even confederate it with India.
Jinnah was undoubtedly bitter over Mountbatten's surrender to the demand of Nehru's Congress for the division of the Muslim-majority provinces of the Punjab and Bengal in his June 3 Partition plan as the price for conceding what to him was a truncated and "moth-eaten" Pakistan.
Typical of the 47-year-old Mountbatten's intimadatory style of pressurising the 70-year-old Jinnah to accept him as the common Governor-General of the two dominions, instead of insisting on making himself the first Governor-General of Pakistan, is reflected in his own narrative of this episode in the last Viceroy's personal report of July 4, 1947.
(Transfer of Power documents: Vol. 11: L/PO/6/23 ff 155-62).
"I asked him (Jinnah): Do you realise what this will cost you? He said sadly:" It may cost me several crores of rupees in assets" to which I replied somewhat acidly: "It may well cost you the whole of your assets and the future of Pakistan." I then got up and left the room."
It was in the evening of July 2, 1947 that the Quaid-i-Azam called on Mountbatten at the Viceroy's House in New Delhi and formally told him that he wanted himself to be the first Governor-General of Pakistan, implying that Mountbatten's proposal that he should be the common Governor-General of Pakistan and India after the transfer of power on August 15 was not acceptable to the Muslim League. In the words of Mountbatten, this was a bombshell for him. In the previous month he had told the British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, that the leaders of both India and Pakistan would want him to be their common Governor-General to complete the partition process. Historical records show that while Nehru had volunteered such an assurance in May 1947, the Quaid-i-Azam had made no such commitment to Mountbatten.
Mountbatten was so upset by Jinnah's decision not to have him as Pakistan's first Governor-General that he rushed, only July 3, 1947, the following Top Secret telegram to Premier Attlee in London: (ToP:Vol.11: Telegram:R/3/1/62 f 17:3/7/47)
"1. Jinnah came to see me last night and told me he wanted to be Governor-General of Pakistan from the date of the transfer of power.
2. I have spent four hours since then trying to make him realise the advantages that Pakistan would gain from having the same Governor-General as India for the initial period until partition is complete. He is so adamant that he openly says that he would prefer to lose the crores worth of assets which he would get in a fair partition under my supervision, than share a Governor-General.
3. I am now faced with the appalling problem of whether to accept Nehru's offer to stay on as Governor-General of India or whether to pull out on August 15th.
4. I will telegraph Jinnah's full points of view and arguments and my recommendations later."
As this telegram reveals, Mountbatten's four-hour harangue to Jinnah did not make him budge even an inch from his firm stand that he (Jinnah) - and not Mountbatten - should be the first Governor-General of Pakistan. The Viceroy's vanity was badly hurt but he himself invited this discomfiture by failing to inspire confidence in Jinnah in his impartiality and fairness and by making the anti-Jinnah Nehru a knight-errant of the Viceregal Establishment. It was also well-known to Jinnah that Mountbatten, in his constitutional and administrative planning for the Subcontinent, leaned heavily on his booze-loving Hindu Adviser, V.P. Menon, an acolyte of the Muslim-baiting Congress strongman, Sardar Vallabhabhai Patel. Mountbatten's own records and his official reports to London confirm that, to a large extent, his June 3 partition plan, as finally approved by the Attlee Government, was the handiwork of V.P. Menon in the leafy cool of the viceregal lodge in Simla where Mountbatten then had Nehru as his privilege house-guest. Nehru virtually "okayed" Menon's partition plan even before Jinnah knew of it. Jinnah was also intrigued by the titillating stories circulating in the Indian capital about the unusually close relations between the Viceroy's consort, Edwina, and his Cabinet Minister, Nehru, a romantic widower who relished stimulating female company. The Vicereine was then in the mid-40s and Nehru was greying at 58.
There was no valid reason for Mountbatten's strong reaction to Jinnah's refusal to have him as the common Governor-General of Pakistan with India because even as early as May 17, 1947, he had categorically told the Viceroy that there should be two Governor-General for the dominions of Pakistan and India. This was the time when Mountbatten had reached the conclusion that conceding Pakistan, with the division of the Punjab and Bengal along communal lines, was the only practical solution of India's vexed constitutional problem and that the British Government should transfer power to the two new dominions by mid-August 1947 instead of June 1948 (as was announced by Premier Attlee in February 1947). Jinnah did indicate to Mountbatten that he would consider the Viceroy's proposal for a joint Governor-General for less than a year but there is no evidence to suggest that Jinnah had at any stage agreed to it.
In November 1978, when I was serving as a Minister at the Pakistan High Commission in London, I pointedly asked Mountbatten at a Victoria League reception whether Jinnah had given him a promise to have him as the common Governor-General and the last Viceroy admitted that he did not do so. "But common friends told me that he may be agreeable", Mountbatten added, but gave no names.
An analytical study of the British Government's Transfer of Power documents relating to May, June and July 1947 and Mountbatten's own memorabilia shows that he had used the Nawab of Bhopal and Liaquat Ali Khan to persuade Jinnah to accept him as the common Governor-General of Pakistan and India but the Quaid, for very sound and cogent reasons, declined to do so. A stickler for constitutional and legal propriety, Jinnah was baffled by the preposition that the two new dominions should share the same Governor-General; it was like having one man ride two horses at the same time. At no stage had Mountbatten spelt out the modalities of how a common Governor-General would function.
His Viceregal aides - the "Dickie birds" - had tinkered with some hugely vague ideas and innovated some gubernatorial nomenclature such as Supreme Governor-General (for Mountbatten), acting Governor-General, Governor-General-designate and Deputy Governor-General. But the operational format for a common Governor-General was never made known to Jinnah either by Mountbatten or his senior aides.
The Quaid-i-Azam was more than convinced that Nehru was using his easy access to the viceregal establishment to propagandise against the Muslim League and its demand for Pakistan and to poison Mountbatten's ears against him (Jinnah). Two days after Mountbatten's arrival in New Delhi as the new Viceroy, he had a long meeting with Nehru on March 24, 1947, and he noted in his official record: "Pandit (Nehru) struck me as most sincere". Mountbatten sought Nehru's opinion of Jinnah and his bias-ridden reply was: "A financially successful though a mediocre lawyer, Jinnah had not been politically successful until after the age of 60". (Mission with Mountbatten: Campbell-Johnson: London: 1972: p 32). Mountbatten's Press Aide during his Indian Viceroyalty, Alan Campbell-Johnson quoted other uncomplimentary expressions used by Mountbatten to describe his initial encounters with Jinnah in New Delhi.
There was no truth in Nehru's back biting against the Quaid-i-Azam. Jinnah was one of the most sought after, brilliant and highly-paid lawyers in India; Nehru, also a Barrister from London, was unable to make his mark in India's legal profession. Much before Nehru became an influential figure in India's political arena in the 1930s, Jinnah was a front-rank politician of India-wide fame and stature since the 1910s.
Jinnah's suspicions about Mountbatten's impartiality as the new British Viceroy were aroused when the pro-Congress Hindu newspapers ran seemingly-inspired stories claiming that the wishes of the Congress leadership, especially those of Nehru, had weighed heavily in Labour Premier Attlee's selection of Mountbatten for the viceroyalty in India and the unceremonious recall of his predecessor, Lord Wavell, from New Delhi in March 1947. The meat for some of these stories was covertly provided to friendly journalists by Nehru's Congress emissary in London, Krishna Menon, who claimed close friendship with Attlee, Stafford Cripps and other Labour Ministers.
In 1946, Mountbatten, as head of the South East Asia military command, had befriended Nehru during his visit to Singapore as a Minister in the Indian interim Government. He promoted a reception for Nehru in Singapore, ignoring the wishes of the local British authorities who disliked Nehru for his anti-British 'Quit India' movement in 1942 during World War II. Nehru's Anglicised ways and his arm-chair socialism impressed Mountbatten and his wife who harboured mildly leftist views.
Soon after Mountbatten became the Viceroy in New Delhi, his initial parleys were with Nehru, Gandhi, Patel and other Congress leaders. A fortnight later, he met Jinnah and asked him to accept the Cabinet Mission's plan for a unified Federation of India (as was Attlee's wish when he posted Mountbatten to New Delhi). Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan urged him to accept the Muslim League's demand of Pakistan.
Hypothetically, if Jinnah had agreed to having Mountbatten as the common Governor-General of the dominions of India and Pakistan, in all likelihood Nehru would have been India's Prime Minister and Liaquat Ali Khan would have been Pakistan's Prime Minister, with Jinnah opting for the Presidentship of Pakistan's Constituent Assembly pandits federal legislature. In this imaginary scenario, Mountbatten, as the common Governor-General, would have spent most of his time in bigger India's magnificent capital city, New Delhi, paying short visits to Karachi, smaller Pakistan's hurriedly-improvised bearish federal capital.
For Pakistanis and in the eyes of the world at large, it would have been tantamount to Mountbatten running the affairs of infant Pakistan from the Indian capital. Such an arrangement would have been terribly odd, even bizarre, blurring the image of Pakistan's independent statehood. Sending urgent and secret official documents of the Pakistan government from Karachi by couriers to Mountbatten at his gubernatorial headquarters in New Delhi or Simla would have been a security risk for Pakistan, making its State papers vulnerable to Indian espionage.
With the two new dominions using the British-framed Government of India Act of 1935 (with minor amendments) as their interim Constitution, the joint Governor-General would have had the power to dismiss a federal cabinet or impose Governor's rule in any difficult province. Mountbatten's known weakness for Nehru and his bigger India would have given indirect leverage to the Indian Prime Minister to interfere in Pakistan's internal affairs and its foreign policy.
Nehru's India was then a going concern, having inherited the wealth and paraphernalia of British imperial power while fledgling Pakistan was being built from almost the scratch, lacking state infrastructures and cash flow. In a crunchy situation for a Pakistan in which its economic survival was imperilled, Nehru might have conspired through Mountbatten for its doom or by doling out Indian money to make Pakistan India's client state.
A few days after announcing the 3rd of June Partition Plan, Mountbatten told his aides that he hoped Pakistan "would not set up diplomatic missions in too many countries". Jinnah's protests dissuaded Mountbatten from succumbing to Nehru's Machiavellian argument that his India was the real and only successor to the British Paramount power in the Subcontinent and that Pakistan was no more than a seceding fragment of India.
The Muslim League had threatened to withdraw from the 3rd of June settlement if the British Government accepted Nehru's preposterous demand. (ToP Volume 11:Mountbatten's telegram to Earl Listowel, Secretary of State for India, in London: No R/3/I/54 F 13 of July 2, 1947).
Even Ian Stephens, Editor of the Statesman, one of India's leading English dailies, who knew Mountbatten well, doubted the wisdom and practicability of having a joint Governor-General of India and Pakistan. In his book, the Horned Moon, (London: 1953:pp.112-113), Stephens wrote: "How could any one, however, able, function effectively as Governor-General of both the new dominions...". The Times, London, in its editorial of July 11, 1947, did not question the prudence of Jinnah nominating himself as Pakistan's Governor-General and counselled that the new State "must be guided by a Governor-General capable of exercising the functions of higher control and coordination which formerly vested in a Canning or Curzon".
The Quaid-e-Azam's detractors and Mountbatten's dupes have argued that Pakistan would have been materially better off had Jinnah agreed to share Mountbatten with India as the common Governor-General. What they seem to ignore is that Mountbatten and Nehru shared a common dislike for Jinnah and his Pakistan and Mountbatten would not have been fair and impartial, in his dual gubernatorial role, towards Pakistan. One of Britain's ablest young historians, Andrew Roberts, has put into focus, with remarkable research and clarity, the anti-Jinnah Mountbatten-Nehru nexus in his book Eminent Churchillians (Phoenix-Orion, London: 1955).
In a chapter aptly captioned: "Lord Mountbatten and the perils of Andrenalin", Andrew Roberts has demolished Mountbatten's claim of impartiality in his dealings with Nehru's Congress and Jinnah's Muslim League. Roberts wrote (p.87): "Time and again carrots were dangled for Nehru whereas Jinnah only ever experienced the stick. Mountbatten could hardly have been surprised when his plan to become Governor-General of both dominions after Independence came to nothing..." In Freedom At Midnight, a hagiographic account of Mountbatten's viceroyalty by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, their hero uses some atrociously unbecoming words for Jinnah such as "a lunatic", "an evil genius" and a psychopathic case."
A knowledgeable historian of the 1947 Partition, H. V. Hodson, in his scholarly work, the Great Divide, (Oxford University Press: Oxford: 1985:pp.332-334) discloses that Mountbatten, reacting to Jinnah's decision not to have him as a common Governor-General, rushed his Chief of Staff, Lord Ismay, to London on July 7, 1947, to seek Premier Attlee's guidance whether he should accept Nehru's invitation on behalf of the congress to be the Governor-General of the dominion of India. Significantly, the document the Viceroy sent with Ismay to Attlee had a note saying that both Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan had confirmed in writing that they would welcome Mountbatten staying on as India's Governor-General. Attee promptly approved Mountbatten's new assignment in the service of Nehru's India.
A former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Chaudhry Muhammad Ali, who was close to Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan and had intimate knowledge of the 1947 Partition of the subcontinent, wrote in later years: "A common Governor-General for two independent Governments, with opposed interests, was to his (Jinnah's) mind a constitutional absurdity... the people of Pakistan could not possibly feel confident that they had attained sovereign independence unless the founder of the State himself came to the helm as the first Governor-General symbolising the national urges and popular aspirations of a liberated people" (Emergence of Pakistan: Chaudhry Muhammad Ali: New York: 1967: p. 175).
New insights into certain dim aspects of the 1947 Partition indicate that the Congress leaders agreed to the Partition and the creation of Pakistan very reluctantly. It seemed to be their expectation that Jinnah would reject Mountbatten's plan for a truncated Pakistan (less half of the Punjab and Bengal) in which case they would press the British rulers to transfer power to the Congress and quit India and let the Hindu Judggernaut crush the Muslim Leaguers with brute force. Alternatively, if Jinnah accepted Mountbatten's Partition Plan for a rump Pakistan and an unduly hurried transfer of power by the British rulers to the two new dominions, the Congress leadership would work for undoing Partition and absorbing Pakistan in the truncated Indian Union.
In the debate in the House of Commons on the Indian Independence Bill on July 10, 1947, Premier Attlee had expressed the hope that "severance may not endure" and the two dominions, in course of time, would "come together again". (HoC debate record: London: July 10, 1947). Was he not articulating the secret wish and ambition of the Congress troika of Gandhi, Nehru and Patel and their helpful, trusted friend, Mountbatten?
Mountbatten blurted out his secret wish in a confidential report to King George VI in London in 1948 about the working of the Indo-Pakistan Joint Defence Council, which was set up at the time of the partition in August 1947 under his chairmanship, with the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan as its members. He wrote: "it was in my mind that its scope might, indeed, expand, to cover financial and economic matters also, and eventually External Affairs and Communications, which would mean the 'virtual accession' of the two dominions to one another, on the same basis as the States"... (The Great Divide: H.V. Hodon: Oxford University Press: Karachi: 1985: pp. 512).
Would not this scenario have meant, in effect, the end of the 1947 partition of the subcontinent? Jinnah acted very wisely in accepting the truncated Pakistan envisaged in the 3rd of June partition plan and in making himself - not Mountbatten - the first Governor-General of Pakistan.
In September 1976, Mountbatten told a visiting Pakistani journalist, Aziz Beg, in London that he hadn't called Jinnah "an evil genius" as was claimed in "Freedom at Midnight" by its authors but he never issued a contradiction. Even when he addressed a meeting of the Pakistan Inns of Court Association in London in 1977 on "Reflections on Jinnah", he did not offer a contradiction of the derogatory words attributed to him about Pakistan's Founder in "Freedom at Midnight".
The Congress rulers of the dominion of India-Nehru and Patel exploited Mountbatten as their Governor-General for pressurising the 560-plus princely states to accede to the dominion of India. As the King's cousin, Governor-General Mountbatten was in a position to lasso the native states into the Indian pound and smother their initial resistance to surrender to New Delhi's fiat. How very helpful Mountbatten was to Patel in roping in the princely states is revealed in this account in H.V. Hodson's book, The Great Divide (p. 367-378): "Sardar Patel said (to Mountbatten): "I am prepared to accept your offer provided that you give me a full basket of apples".
What do you mean? Asked Lord Mountbatten. "I'll buy a basket with 565 apples" - the complete number of Strates-but if there are even two or three apples missing the deal is off. 'This', said the Viceroy, 'I cannot completely accept, but I will do my best. If I give you a basket with, say, 560 apples, will you buy it?' "Well I might", replied Patel. (Mountbatten's offer related to his strategy for pushing the States into the Indian orbit). Wily V.P. Menon, whom Patel made his main hatchetman as the Secretary of the Dominion of India's States Ministry, has penned a gripping account of the bullying and, at times, cloak-and-dagger methods used by India's rulers to bludgeon the princely states; it is contained in his book, The integration of the Indian States and the Transfer of Power in India (Longmans: London: 1956). Hindu India's seizure of the Muslim-ruled States of Junagarh and Hyderabad and Muslim-majority Kashmir were examples of its aggrandisement.
Among the favours which Mountbatten claimed he did to Pakistan in its infancy was his success in persuading Patel to agree to lend one of the six printing presses of the Government of India in New Delhi to the Pakistan Government-in-making for a few weeks prior to its shifting to Karachi. As agreed, the press was returned to Patel just before Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan flew to Karachi. Mountbatten also claimed that it was through his efforts that the Indian government released Rs 550 million to Pakistan in December 1947 as its remaining share of the Rs 750 million promised to it under the partition settlement. Nehru and Patel were withholding this payment to force Pakistan to withdraw its forces from the embattled Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir.
On October 27, 1947, Hindu India's Governor-General Mountbatten had accepted the Hindu ruler's fraudulent instrument of accession to India, which V.P. Menon had obtained under Nehru's orders, and ordered the airlift of more than 5,000 Indian troops to Srinagar to grab the state's capital.
The above is a chapter from Qutubuddin Aziz's 1997 Jinnah biography: "Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah and the battle for Pakistan".