MIDNIGHT'S FURIES
Nisid Hajari
Penguin/Viking
328 pages; Rs 599
When a big tree falls, said the sage philosopher Rajiv Gandhi in 1985 - after 3,000 Sikhs had been killed in the riots that followed prime minister Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984 - the earth tends to shake.
Likewise when a big empire - especially one as big as the British one - disintegrates or departs. The Indian earth shook very violently in mid-1946 when Mohammad Ali Jinnah turned the Muslims of Calcutta against Hindus to press home his utterly stupid demand for a Muslim homeland, Pakistan.
A year later it again shook very violently when Hindus turned against Muslims in Punjab after the British divided India. And vice versa.
What happened was this. Jinnah was defeated comprehensively in the 1937 election - even by the Muslims who didn't want Pakistan. So he set up a cry that Islam was in danger.
British politicians were thrilled. Here was a gift horse they daren't look in the mouth. With fluttering eyelashes they billed and cooed to him relentlessly till the Second World War ended in August 1945.
Then they sat back and watched the fun as they mid-wifed Pakistan. In the 15 months between August 1946 and December 1947 at least one million - perhaps two - Indians killed each other.
In the six years preceding, Adolf Hitler had killed off six million Jews in Europe. So the world didn't take much notice of India.
Nisid Hajari's excellent account of the Indian holocaust adds nothing very new to what we did not already know. It also leaves out some of the things we did know. But overall, it provides a handy - and very importantly, non-Congress - account of another tragedy caused by European White Man and his subset, the Englishman.
Mr Hajari's book also reminds us, albeit not explicitly, of the old Indian saying about hypocrisy: sau choohe kha kar, billi chali haj par. It is a racy read, ideal for the traveller who wants to get an authentic account of what led to the partitions and its riots. The bad taste in the mouth is the price you pay for the history lesson 1937-47.
As a journalist, Mr Hajari has taken the usual liberties of describing things that he could possibly not have known, such as "the shining headlights" of a jeep or that Mr A "looked exhausted" or that Mr B "gazed down impassively" - and so on. If you don't let those things irritate you, it is a tidy read. The research is impeccable, for the most part, as can be seen from the extensive bibliography comprising an impressive array of works.
I was particularly impressed to see that he has mentioned Kanji Dwarkadas's books. He was Jinnah's "best friend" who knew better than anyone else what was going on in Jinnah's head. Sadly, his books have been out of print for several years and perhaps someone should reprint them. Pakistan may have forgotten Jinnah, but should we, too?
Post-partition histories have, for the most part, been one-sided. In India, the Muslim League view has gone under-presented; in Pakistan, the Congress has been jettisoned. Mr Hajari has tried to maintain the balance. So it is good to see the writings of Indian politicians who became Pakistanis.
Last but not least, which is another nice thing about this volume, is that it gives the British perspective from the viceregal point of view. Claude Auchinleck and Archibald Wavell were the ones who had to deal with London on the one hand and the Indians on the other hand.
As soldiers they both hated it. Wavell maintained a diary, now out of print, but Auchinleck didn't. Mr Hajari has referred to the former. The Oxford University Press should bring out a reprint if only because someone stole my copy.
In the end, though, the Indians were a sideshow. The British held the cards and it was they who decided whether to leave and when to leave. Had Churchill not been defeated in 1945, they would probably have stayed for much longer.
But he was defeated, and when Clement Attlee, his successor, was trying to get out quickly, he had objected vociferously. Mr Hajari points out how he opened a secret line of communication with Jinnah, who was trying to persuade the Labour government not to go. That wasn't to be. Britain was bankrupt after the war and could not afford to hang on.
But it did need a foothold on the sub-continent to safeguard its strategic interests in West Asia. Chandrashekhar Dasgupta's book, which Mr Hajari seems not to have consulted, reveals all this in great detail.
In the event Attlee sent a half-wit from the British aristocracy to deal with departure, "Dickie" the Lord Louis Mountbatten. His motives for speeding it up have been nicely described by Alex von Tunzelmann in her book about the end of empire in India. It is not there either in the bibliography. 'Dickie' was nothing if not honest.
In 1965, he told a former BBC reporter, John Osman, what 350 million Indians had known from 1947.
"I f****d up."
