historian’s inability to get into other people’s bedrooms or private spaces
retrospectively, it is undeniable that close personal relationships did
exist among the three. (A mutual liking for one another had been evident
from the time of their first meeting the year before Mountbatten took
over as viceroy, when as head of South East Asian Command (SEAC)
he and his wife met Nehru on the latter’s visit to Singapore.) There was
a definite closeness between Lady Mountbatten and Nehru – their
relationship is one of the best-known open secrets in Indian history – as
well as between Lord Mountbatten and Nehru. It is also clear that
Mountbatten did not find Jinnah congenial company (very few people
did).
Such questions, however, are largely irrelevant to the larger political
picture. In the course of the interminable negotiations and discussions
that accompanied the transfer of power and partition negotiations, inter-
spersed, as diplomatic etiquette demanded, with space and time for
civilised social intercourse, Nehru seems to have rediscovered in the
Mountbattens’ company something of the pleasant sociability of his
Cambridge and London days. But it would be far too simplistic to suggest
that this had a bearing on long-term British plans. Britain’s geopolitical
and economic interests lay in an undivided independent India as an ally.
So it was in their interest to try and prevent a Pakistan that involved
dividing India – and Mountbatten appears to have tried, and failed, as
Wavell had before him. If partition did have to take place, it was in
Britain’s interest to have a strong India as an ally, with Pakistan and India
maintaining as harmonious relations as possible.
Mountbatten modified the Cabinet Mission Plan to give the Muslim-
majority provinces the option of staying out of a union altogether (the
third tier had vanished), and in London it was suggested that provinces
should be given the right to independence severally instead of as one or
even two entities. This variation, in both its forms, was referred to as
‘Plan Balkan’; realistic expectations of a united India had vanished. The
‘Balkanisation’ of India was not acceptable to Nehru. But Nehru had
by now accepted a division of India as a distinct possibility. Gandhi,
on the other hand, was completely opposed to a partition, and in April
1947 came up with his own plan. To assuage minorities’, and especially
Muslims’, fears of the majority, Jinnah should be asked to form a Cabinet
as leader, with the Congress refraining from using its majority in the
Assembly to stop any League measures, provided they were in the interest
THE END OF THE RAJ 135