THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT AND THE PARTITION OF INDIArelations with a Pakistan restricted to ‘Group A’. He would have preferred
this solution—which reflected Rahmat Ali’s plan—to the ‘moth-eaten’
Pakistan he finally accepted, and for which Rahmat Ali criticised him
bitterly. The latter paid his own price for this censure: the man who had
given a name to the new nation was never permitted to enter Pakistan;
Rahmat Ali died a lonely death in England.
The shock of the ‘Direct Action Day’ in Calcutta did not prevent Wavell
from going ahead with the establishment of the interim government; on the
contrary, it made him even more eager to have such a government to share
the burden of maintaining law and order in India. Nehru and his cabinet
were sworn in on 2 September 1946. Wavell was right in his assumption
that Jinnah would soon climb down and agree to League participation in
this government. However, Jinnah did not enter the government himself: he
deputed his right hand man, Liaquat Ali Khan, to play second fiddle to
Nehru. Not wanting to give up the vital Home Ministry the Congress
relinquished the finance portfolio to Liaquat, who soon annoyed the
Congress by using his powers to obstruct the working of the ministries run
by Congressmen.
In the meantime, Wavell had inaugurated the Constituent Assembly
which was then boycotted by the League. He hoped that in due course the
League would join that assembly, too, just as it had joined the interim
government. Instead of this, he was faced with a Congress request to
dismiss the League ministers, coupled with growing Congress assertiveness
in the Constituent Assembly. To his great dismay he also was unable to get
any final declaration of the aims of the British government despite his
having made repeated requests for such a declaration. In this hopeless
situation he worked on another ‘Breakdown Plan’ which reflected his
military mind. He proposed an orderly regional withdrawal of the British
Indian army, starting with an evacuation of southern India and ending up
with a concentration on the Muslim majority provinces, where he felt the
British might still be welcome. Attlee and his colleagues were appalled by
this plan; Wavell was dismissed and replaced by Lord Mountbatten.
Operation Mountbatten and ‘Plan Balkan’As a cousin of the king and former Supreme Commander of the Southeast
Asian area during the war, Mountbatten had a standing which made him
generally acceptable and nobody could blame Attlee for making a partisan
choice. At the same time, this standing enabled Mountbatten to dictate his
terms when accepting the post which he had not solicited. He was asked
whether he realised that the powers he requested would make him the
superior rather than the subordinate of the secretary of state and he
replied, unruffled, that this is exactly what he wanted. Moreover, his
appointment was accompanied by the very declaration of the aims of the