Slouching
Toward India to be Born:
A Week
through the Eyes of a British Officer in New Delhi, 8 August to
15 August 1947
by Greg Lacour
Author's note: The main character in this piece is fictional. The events surrounding and tormenting him are not. I wrote this "essay " as I did to evoke the mood in India at the time of its independence -- a mood I consider as important as the "bare facts."
8 August 1947
The British Viceroy's residence in New Delhi is a huge, drab stone building, fronted by a large dirt track and a laughably out-of-place iron fountain. <1> Like most things in this country, it is an abominable dust colour, the same colour of India's teeming dirt roads, her natives' once-white homespun garments, my uniform.
The Viceroy's residence stands aloof and imposing, overlooking a city and country for which its presence has long been a source of heated discussion, riot, and murder. One becomes aware of the awesome power of the place shortly before realizing that power is no longer there; it is an illusion born of structural majesty and a remembrance of things as they once were, when Britain ruled supreme and without question over this country now harbouring some 400 million people. Most of these people are in the streets now, in some form or another, either by choice or necessity, poverty or fury. The situation painfully apparent here is that of the staid, inert British Empire on the verge of expulsion from India, and the Indian people on the verge of civil war. Therein lies the difference, the terrifying difference manifest in the presence of the stolid Viceroy's residence in the midst of a country writhing in agony.
To say India is a nation of diversity would be wholly inaccurate; "diversity" carries positive connotations. This is a country of gut-level discord, at every turn and twist threatening to shatter India into dust. A walk down a street in Delhi, as I did this morning, is a journey through a gallery of extremes. One sees lepers, withered hands extended in supplication, begging a well-to-do Briton for a shilling to buy a bowl of sticky rice; affluent Hindu kshatriyas, walking languidly with their wives, careful to stay in the shadows and, simultaneously, to avoid the beggars crouching there; an occasional Sikh, blood-red turban affixed to his head, high-stepping twice as fast as his nearest competitor, eyes invariably focused straight ahead. (The Sikhs are not a happy people. They are desperate for their own separate Sikh province, one Mr. Gandhi will not give them. The very mention of Mr. Gandhi sends a Sikh's veins bulging and nostrils flaring.) <2> Always, there is the heat. In August, add to the heat the bated-breath expectance of the monsoons. Add to all that a searing combination of tension, hatred and scorn between Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Christian and Briton, and you will have some idea of what living in India in August 1947 is about.
Then there is the conundrum of Mr. Gandhi, the Mahatma himself. Never have I encountered a man who can inspire so many variant emotions in people. Among the British here, he inspires fury, bewilderment, shock, horror, frustration, love, respect, even awe at odd, silent moments. Clearly we British have been thrust into the role of collective Pontius Pilate; we as much as anyone here believe in the holiness of the man, but what are we to do when he openly defies the law of the Empire? Today, I feel a new emotion for him - pity. Mr. Jinnah, the president of the Muslim League (the Muslim counterpart to the Hindu Congress) and Governor-General Designate of Pakistan, has left today for Karachi, the capital of the new state. <3> Pakistan. Indian independence seems imminent, but it is a hollow victory for those like Mr. Gandhi who have sacrificed so much for that independence, only to see a divided India. It is odd - and, in a sense, a soul-rending travesty - that, at what should be one of the happiest moments of Mr. Gandhi's life, he is fasting, raging in his own introverted way against a Hindu-Muslim faction he prayed would never occur.
Clearly, this is a time of upheaval. The Second World War is over, thank God, but it has left in its wake a world unsure of its footing, waiting for Number Three to come. There are rumors of a free Jewish state. The United States is leading a new league of nations, the United Nations. And here, after three-and-a-half centuries of British rule, India appears to be breaking free. It is a painful and costly freedom.
I have been stationed here as associate adjutant to Lord Mountbatten for three weeks, and have seen more in that time than I could ever have imagined back in the U.K. Living in India in 1947 means living one step closer to Hell; I hope to record at least some of the spirit of that Hell.
Capt. David St. John
Macauley
New Delhi, India
9 August 1947
The past three weeks have seen India torn apart by communal fighting, mostly between Muslim and Hindu. The worst areas are Calcutta and the Punjab province, especially its capital, Lahore. There, Muslim and Hindu alike jockey for power, trading blow for blow. <4> Mr. Gandhi once said that if mankind takes an eye for an eye, the whole world will become blind. <5> The Punjab has long since become blind - with rage.
In some respects, Calcutta is worse. Although the fighting in Lahore is intense, the opportunity remains for it to dissipate into the surrounding countryside of Punjab. Calcutta has no such outlet. There is an end-of-the-line air about the city; everything about it suggests that whatever the Ganges has gathered in its trek from the mountains has collected and ripened there. The recent Muslim-Hindu conflict blazing in the city has lent the impression that Calcutta is ready to explode with communal tension.
And the pressure continues to build. I found out earlier today that a large mob of Hindus stopped a train at a station in a Calcutta suburb yesterday (Friday), pulled out eleven Muslim passengers and stabbed them to death. The mob was apparently seeking revenge for the deaths of two Hindus who were similarly grabbed from a train Thursday by a Muslim gang a few miles from Calcutta. Yesterday's action was the bloodiest communal killing of the year in Calcutta. Twenty lives, Hindu or Muslim, have been lost in the riots around Calcutta in the past two days, with no foreseeable avenue to peace. <6>
But, as bad as Calcutta is now, less of an avenue to peace exists in the Punjab. Therein lies an added incendiary element - the Sikhs. Fighting and rioting continues in Lahore and in villages in the district of Amritsar (a name the British cringe to hear. On Sunday, 13 April 1919, Brigadier R. E. H. Dyer ordered his troops to open fire on some ten thousand unarmed Hindus gathered for a festival in a garden at Jallianwala Bagh, in Amritsar. The troops fired 1650 rounds of ammunition non-stop for ten minutes. There were 1516 casualties. <7> Any discussion of Western moral superiority ceases instantly at the mention of Amritsar.), whose Muslim-Sikh battles have resulted in one hundred twenty dead and hundreds more injured. <8>
Hope for a united India was a cornerstone of thought for many of these reformers, Mr. Gandhi the most visible and important of them. But it is becoming clear, as a British representative told me last week, that India is not one state, but many, divided and polarized among Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, princely states, and a handful of Christians and Jews. Mr. Gandhi and his ilk have for many years believed nobly that India can be one, but seems to have missed one important truth about the makeup of this land. From the beginning, India has been an odd melange of varying cultures and influences. The character of India seems to be based on class division and hierarchy; the Aryan brahmans and kshatriyas reigning over the lower, darkskinned shudras and untouchables, the Muslims exerting power over the Hindus, the Hindus exerting power over the Muslims, the Sikhs often getting caught in the middle. Not only that, 400 million people live in India. It would be next to impossible to control such a large group of people spread out over the immensity of India, Mother India as the advocates of unity say. We are all children of one Mother, they entreat us, and we are all children of the same God. But can those children ultimately live in peace, together?
Such is perhaps the bitterest irony concerning the reformists, particularly Mr. Gandhi. He cannot see the iniquities of other men simply because those iniquities have never taken residence in his soul. The man does not understand dissension or violence - they are concepts alien to him. If Mr. Gandhi goes down in history as having, in the strictest sense, failed, it will be because he could only see the goodness in man, and not the inherent wickedness any great leader of men must at least take into account.
Earlier this afternoon, I helped Lord Mountbatten make preparations for his departure. I wonder if he truly realizes the significance of his being the last Viceroy of India. Six days from now, he will address the Pakistan Constituent Assembly as part of the ceremony christening that new nation; that will be the last act he or anyone else will ever perform as Viceroy of India. <9> Certainly that fact will not bother the Indians who are ready to see the British leave. God knows Mother India has had its fill of cruel, bumbling or stupid Viceroys throughout the centuries. But I feel confident that history will treat the Hon. Earl Lord Louis Mountbatten of Burma with exceptional grace. He, perhaps more than any Briton in history, has put his heart into making India a truly free land, ruling with fairness and dignity. But he told me as I helped him prepare that he wishes there were a way he could help stop the communal fighting that continues to ravage India as I write. He is deeply saddened and frustrated by this; he says he wants to see India at peace, but feels he can do little about it at this stage. He is probably right. The tensions between Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and others have been building for centuries. We are merely at the receiving end of a fire several generations have helped stoke.
DSM
New Delhi
10 August 1947
A small grove of benevolently shady trees (still young, I suppose; they provide adequate but hardly engulfing shade) lies in the area surrounding the Viceroy's residence. In early and mid-morning, before the still-potent sun becomes too harsh, I like to go there to read and reflect before my many evening duties. Lately, the time I can spare to relax under the trees has been directly disproportionate to my need to do so; many important things are happening in and around the residence. But this morning, I found an extra forty-five minutes or so to sit and ease my mind for awhile.
The book I chose to read - one Lord Mountbatten has advised me to peruse is James Mill's The History of British India. While I will admit that the book is a landmark of sorts, one of the British Empire's earliest attempts at selfrecognition, its outright presumptuousness made me laugh. At first, I took Mill's occasional frankness as a good sign:
And it may be affirmed, as a principle, not susceptible of dispute, that good management of any portion of the affairs of any community is almost always proportional to the degree of knowledge respecting it diffused in that community. Hither to the knowledge of India, enjoyed by the British community, has been singularly defective. <10>
Not especially good writing, to be sure, but at least honest. I knew I was in for a dubious reading experience, however, when I got to page nine: "This writer ... has never been in India . . ." <11> Dear God! How can anyone pretend to write an analysis and exploration of a place when he hasn't even been there? I read on and continued to be astounded (and highly amused) by what Mill wrote:
It may be regarded as a characteristic of this primary institution of government, that it is founded upon divine authority. The superstition of a rude people is particularly suited to such a pretension. While ignorant and solitary, men are perpetually haunted with the apprehension of superior powers; and, as in this state only they can be imposed upon by the assumption of a divine character and commission, so it is evidently the most effectual means which a great man, full of the spirit of improvement, can employ, to induce a people, jealous and impatient of all restraint, to forego their boundless liberty, and submit to the curb of authority. <12>
Underneath the high-brow rhetoric and generally dreadful writing lie several major misgivings about the nature of the Indian people and, for that matter, the British. For one, I am thoroughly confused by his statement that "a rude people" is prone to an adherence to a divine form of authority. He is talking about the Indians, but couldn't that generalization apply equally in history to the British, with our belief in royalty passed on divinely through blood? Also, the final sentence (ye gods, how unwieldy.) is so abstract it could be applied to just about anyone - I believe most men are haunted with at least the threat of superior powers, and the Western populaces are no more advanced than the Eastern in 11 submit[ting] to the curb of authority." God, look at Germany but a few years ago! They were turned into warmblooded robots in the face of a powerful, yet human "Fuehrer." And Mr. Mill has the audacity to talk about Indians as a "rude people."
But one passage in the book sent chills up my spine and vaulted me violently back into this nation of violence:
In dangerous and disorderly times, when every thing which the nation values depends upon the sword, the military commander exercises unlimited authority by universal consent; and so frequently is this the situation of a rude and uncivilized people, surrounded on all sides by rapacious and turbulent neighbors, that it becomes, in a great measure, the habitual order of things. <13>
So do we have India now, I thought, feeling the heat grow stronger in the grove as the sun rose higher into a blue, slightly hazy sky. That is why, as much as many people respect Mr. Gandhi and Mr. Nehru, non-violence will always be called into question. Humanity, at its most elemental level, understands only force. Unlimited authority by universal consent.
Meanwhile, Lord Mountbatten is doing everything he can to ensure a strong independent India. Yesterday, he hinted to northern Indian princes that he would enforce a "get tough" policy with those who would not bring their states into a union with the newly-formed Dominion of India. <14> Under Lord Mountbatten's proposed agreement, the Princely States would surrender only defense, foreign affairs and communications to the centralized Indian government; the states themselves would retain full internal autonomy. One concern of Lord Mountbatten is that some of the States will join Pakistan. Rumors have been thrown about, but so far only the minor Princely States of Swat and Tonk have expressed a desire to accede to Pakistan. <15> As the date of independence draws nearer, Indians and British alike are wracking their brains for solutions to the problem of realignment. I am one of those sweating out the hours. The problems, really, are only beginning.
DSM
New Delhi
11 August 1947
I received a letter from my wife today. She and Jeremy are doing splendidly, and Aunt Nancy sends her best. Theresa also sent a recent photo of her and Jeremy taken outside our home in Lancaster. I hate to reinforce one of the oldest cliches in existence, but he really is sprouting a foot every time I see him, either in person or through a photo. He looks nothing like me and painfully like his mother. I miss them all terribly.
But while I pine for them, the Indian Muslims are coming closer and closer to the creation of Pakistan. Yesterday, predominant leaders there, including Mr. Jinnah, initiated the Karachi Assembly for the purpose of drafting a constitution. <16> Any twinge of hope anyone may have had for Hindus and Muslims to reconcile their differences has long since been lost. In a matter of days, India will be partitioned, perhaps for good.
But the fighting will rage for a long time. Amritsar has become the world's largest killing floor: Last night, one hundred thirty-eight Muslims and two Sikhs were killed as a result of what Reuters called "widespread disturbances" in five villages surrounding Amritsar. <17> Disturbances, indeed. One hundred forty people killed in one night of communal warfare? It's so cruelly ironic that the British press a century ago made so much of the infamous "Black Hole of Calcutta" in which a handful of Britons died. This is the true black hole. It is somewhat tempered because a) it is occurring in the East, where the press is often reluctant to cover stories as extensively as in the West; b) this is coming on the heels of the Second World War. In time, I think, the Western masses will realize the horrific wounds this nation is now bearing. But it may take years. As for now, we can only watch and pray that whatever freedom India gains in these next few days will remain and grow; pray that the hatred between Muslim and Hindu and Sikh will die with the creation of two separate dominions.
DSM
New Delhi
CALCUTTA FEARFUL ON FREEDOM'S EVE
Gandhi Trying to Stem Killing
- Fires Rage in the Punjab
- Karachi a Boom Town
(c) special to the New York Times
Calcutta, India, Aug. 12 - Congress party newspapers this morning feature the story of yesterday's tour of Calcutta by Mohandas K. Gandhi and relate how both Hindus and Moslems greeted the "Apostle of Peace." In adjoining columns on the front page, they carry the story of yesterday's rioting. It cost twelve lives.
No more has been heard in Mr. Gandhi's entourage of his intention to fast to cure the city of its ills. Many outside these circles hope that the idea has been dropped, for they doubt whether even Mr. Gandhi could now bring peace to Calcutta.
On the eve of freedom, the city is full of fear. In three days last week twenty-seven persons were killed and more than 140 injured in communal clashes, shootings and bomb attacks. Added to these casualties is the frequent grim discovery of bodies in sacks, boxes and in sewers under the city.
The new Congress party ministry is as helpless against this tide of communal hatred and violence as was the Moslem League before it ... <18>
13 August 1947
I arose before dawn this morning. I'm not sure exactly why, but it probably had something to do with this feeling I've been having recently that I shall awake one morning and everything beneath me - my morals, my family, my career, my sanity - will be shot to hell. Gone. I don't even know how. The feeling clings to me like a lead overcoat.
There is so much to compromise in this blasted place. If you're a British officer, you want to show your strength and get these bastards under control, but you can't because you're leaving soon and you'd be making trouble for yourself anyway. If you're a Christian, you want to tell these people - the Hindus, the Muslims, the Sikhs - that blowing each other's heads off is not ultimately going to solve anything, that it will create the chaos and agony and hatred we see now. But you can't because they won't listen. Theirs is a hard-headedness of which Westerners only encounter snippets. (What did Kipling say? East is East and West is West and whatever? The professors told me that was metaphorical ... ) And finally, if you're a human being - and honestly, I sometimes wonder if I still qualify - you hear about the outright massacre of people in the Punjab and in Calcutta and want to drop to your knees and bawl like a child.
And then there's the bloody heat. Humidity. Disease. In India, every Englishman, whether he wants to admit it or not, is in a perpetual state of nausea. The degrees vary, but the feeling is always there - the stomach swaying gently from side to side, or rocking violently from side to side, or churning so furiously you can barely walk. I've seen several European officers, not just British, pastyfaced and sweaty in the grip of malaria or what we call the "bloody piss," which causes the nob to swell and your piss to turn a lovely rose colour. No one here is immune from the filth.
And tomorrow, the midnight hour, 14 August 1947, India and Pakistan will become free dominions. All wonderful, jolly fucking splendid for them, but at what price? What kind of nations will they have if the Muslims can't stop killing the Sikhs and the Hindus can't stop killing the Muslims and the Sikhs can't stop killing whomever they get their perfervid, shaggy little hands on? What good is "independence" if it entails twenty or thirty people dead in the streets of each major city every night? And the one man - one man - who has been the beacon of hope for the few peacelovers in India has seen the violence and wants it stopped. So what is he doing? Threatening to starve himself to death. Brilliant. A bullet in the head works quicker, Mahatma.
Me? I'm tired of it. The sun is coming out. It will be unbearably hot today. My insides from the middle of my chest to my groin feel like putrefied ground mutton. My head hurts from thinking too much and not sleeping enough. I want to kiss my wife and son and drink several pints of Guinness. I want out of India. Several hundred people will die tonight in the name of a "free" India. I want out of India.
Me
you know where I am
too early
14 August 1947
India and Pakistan are free dominions. But other matters first.
Mr. Gandhi, bless his soul, is walking much too close to death. I often wonder if he's fearless or simply foolhardy.
Last night, the expected occurred. As the hour of independence drew ever closer, anger and tension escalated in the two "hot spots" - the Punjab and Calcutta. In Calcutta, Mr. Gandhi met with the ex-Premier of Bengal, H.S. Suhrawardy, in a deserted house in the midst of the communal fighting in the city to discuss possible peace between Hindu and Muslim factions. <19> I thought I had heard wrong and told Alan Carpenter, the young lieutenant who brought me the news, that Mr. Gandhi must be mad. Alan agreed and said, "If either one of them is killed, Calcutta's sunk. The rioting will be unbearably fierce. And God knows there are enough Hindus and Muslims around to do the job. The whole thing is ludicrously dangerous - and typically Gandhi." <20> Not long after the meeting, a Hindu mob, apparently angry at Mr. Gandhi for conceding too much to the Muslims, stoned the house where the Mahatma has taken residence. No one was hurt, and Mr. Gandhi himself is safe, but the ominous air that has hung over Calcutta for months has become even more foreboding. God, no one is safe in that city. And if Mr. Gandhi is killed within the next few days...
To make matters worse (why is that such a given, that matters are getting worse?), riots are ravaging Lahore. Last night's riots were the worst, bloodiest string of fights Lahore has seen since the communal fighting began five months ago. An unofficial estimate given by the Associated Press listed one hundred five persons killed in Lahore yesterday; ninety-nine Sikhs and Hindus, six Muslims. Five Sikh temples are ablaze. According to more unofficial estimates, more than ninety-five percent of Lahore's five hundred thousand Hindu and Sikh population has already fled the city, now populated mostly by Muslims. <21>
Lord Mountbatten, who is now in Karachi, and I discussed matters briefly this afternoon over the telephone. I told him of my feelings toward India early yesterday (they've mellowed somewhat). He said it's a common reaction for an inexperienced British officer to come to a strange Eastern land and experience depression, homesickness, and anger outside the natural bouts with disease, which everyone goes through at one time or another. Then he said something strange. "Two nights ago," he said, voice dropping to an uncharacteristic mutter, "I received the daily report of the rioting in the Punjab. I was going about it the way I usually do, doublechecking the report, talking it over with Douglas and the rest. 'Men, as I turned to go outside, I just cracked. I can't describe it any other way. You could have knocked me down with a leaf. Needless to say, I scurried to my quarters." Astounding. The indomitable Lord Mountbatten?
But independence has finally come. A crucial day, of course. But the rioting roars on, and I can't truly celebrate the independence of a land as it's being destroyed from within by internal strife. Pandit Nehru made a splendid speech here to begin ceremonies. He began: "Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will wake to life and freedom." <22> India, in name at least, is a free land. But I still shudder to think of her immediate future.
DSM
New Delhi
15 August 1947
Waking up this morning in a free India was, superficially, little different from waking in British India: The same townspeople went to the same restaurants and food stands; the same birds sang in the same trees; the same shadows crept along the same paths.
But India, for better or worse, is changed now, forever. Britain is letting go of the hand of what once was its most prized child and settling back to see if the child can live on its own.
'Me road directly ahead will be extremely difficult. Pandit Nehru, though an eloquent and exemplary statesman, is already showing the strain of anticipating his new position as prime minister of a free India. He warned the people gathered in New Delhi's Constituent Assembly, "The past clings on to us still." <23> He's only half right, and slightly out of focus; the hellish present is what clings ominously to this newborn state.
The communal fighting continued yesterday in Lahore. Fires and looting raged throughout the stricken city and the ever-rising death toll had reached one hundred fifty-three at last count. <24>
Ironically - perhaps appropriately - Mr. Gandhi was in Calcutta yesterday, not New Delhi. Even as his dream was being realized, though not in the form he had hoped, he was staying true to his credo: Where goes injustice, follow to stamp it out. He was among Muslims in Calcutta, where he said he was needed more, as the flag of an independent India was being raised at the Constituent Assembly and those there praised him as the true hero of the day. <25>
The ceremonies proclaiming Pakistan a free nation were sparsely attended. <26>
The final irony of this beaten, savaged, terrifyingly glorious day: Indian astrologers proclaimed inauspicious arrangements of the stars for 14 August. The Western press greeted this bit of news with amusement. The Indian press, of course, splashed the story on front pages nationwide. <27>
I shall be leaving India soon, no doubt. I'm not sure exactly when. I may come back. I may not. But this place and these four-plus weeks will remain with me, always, creeping up in the still, limbo-like moments of my life, whether I want them to or not, whether or not India ever wanted me here to begin with.
DSM
New Delhi
Notes
1 Gandhi, dir. Richard Attenborough, TriStar Motion Pictures, 1983.
2 Jasjit Singh Walia, general lecture on Sikhism for Dr. Nancy Anderson's History of India class, 7 February 1991.
3 Unnamed (special to the New York Times), "Jinnah in Karachi to Take Over Helm," New York Times 8 August 1947, late ed.: A8.
4 Unnamed (special to the New York Times), "11 Moslems Pulled From Train, Killed," New York Times 9 August 1947, late ed.: A4.
5 Gandhi, dir. Richard Attenborough, Tri Star Motion Pictures, 1983.
6 Unnamed (special to the New York Times), "11 Moslems Pulled From Train, Killed," New York Times 9 August 1947, late ed.: A4
7 Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). p. 299.
8 Unnamed (special to the New York Times), "11 Moslems Pulled From Train, Killed," New York Times 9 August 1947, late ed.: A4.
9 Robert Trumbull, "Last Viceregal Party," New York Times 14 August 1947, late ed.: A3.
10 James Mill, The History of British India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), p. 8.
11 Mill p. 9.
12 Mill, p. 41.
13 Mill, p. 7 1.
14 Robert Trumbull, "Pressure now put on Indian Princes," New York Times 10 August 1947, late ed.: A45.
15 Ibid.
16 Unnamed (special to the New York Times), "Pakistan Initiates Karachi Assembly," New York Times 11 August 1947, late ed.: A24.
17 Ibid.
18 Unnamed (special to the New York Times), "Calcutta Fearful on Freedom's Eve," New York Times 13 August 1947, late ed.: Al 1.
19 Unnamed (special to the New York Times, "Riots Sweep Punjab Capital; Mob Stones Gandhi's House," New York Times 14 August 1947, late ed.: Al.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Wolpert, p. 349.
23 Ibid.
24 Robert Trumbull, "India and Pakistan Become Nations; Clashes Continue," New York Times 15 August 1947, late ed.: Al.