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- [00:01]
Anita Anand
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:22]
William Dalrymple
At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner, however you choose to do. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running is all about. Run your way@newbalance.com Running hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Anand and me, William Dalrymple. And we are in the midst of our mammoth romp through this rather excellent book by Sam Dalrymple. Yes, related not to me, but of the author of Shattered A Story of Five Partitions. Sam, thank you so much for coming back to us. So look, the last time we left you in this series, we had talked about Direct Action Day in Calcutta, which really was, if you like, a foreshadowing of what would happen and the kind of violence that could be unleashed on a country where Hindus and Muslims had lived together, got along together for centuries and how quickly that can just flare up into the most unspeakable violence. So we are now going to jump to Britain in 1947 because it's really important to point this out. People often ask this when we have like our discord chats. Did the Empire fall because the British were knackered or the Indians did it?
- [02:00]
Anita Anand
Yes, it's a big, it's a big divide, isn't it? If you go to India, everyone's, it's, of course, the triumphant freedom fighters drove out the wicked, perfidious seeds of Albion. But here, the overall opinion, I'm speaking from London, it was, you know, sort of post war exhaustion. We'd just beaten the Nazis and couldn't be asked to carry on. That's the kind of view this.
- [02:20]
William Dalrymple
Well, I mean, just, just before we bring Sam in, I mean, let's, let's, let's give you an overview and then, you know, as with all of these things on Empire, you make up your own mind. There is no doubt that Britain had crippling war debts. So, you know, the government was shutting down the nation's electricity for five hours a day, something that people in India are quite familiar with, the load shedding arrangement. Even today, over the course of a single week, Whitehall announced that it couldn't afford to fight communist guerrillas in Greece. This was something that, you know, know Churchill had wanted more than anything. And we Talked about this a little bit during the Yalta conference episodes. They also said they'd begin to pull out of their mandate for Palestine and withdraw from India at the end of June 1948. So this all coalesced together.
- [03:05]
Anita Anand
It's extraordinary how those things come together. We don't think of them and they're so often studied separately. There's one set of scholars that do the whole mess that we left in Israel, Palestine. There's another set of scholars that do the conflict between India, Pakistan and all that. The fact it's the same complete crisis in Britain with no money at all, massive post war debts, everyone on rationing that generates both problems at the same time is often forgotten.
- [03:31]
William Dalrymple
I think as we always answer this question, it is both. You know, if you had one of those things alone, this would not have happened. You wouldn't have had this sort of severe contraction of the British Empire.
- [03:41]
Anita Anand
We should even ask our guest what he thinks about this. Maybe at some point.
- [03:45]
William Dalrymple
I was just about to. Hello, Sam. What do you think about this? Sam, what do you think about this question, Sam? Is it sort of knackered or defiant? What was the main reason for the end of this?
- [03:54]
Sam Dalrymple
I think it's both. As you said, the economy of Britain had collapsed. You know, a huge amount of wealth had been drained from Britain. The blitz has happened and at the same time you have in India the naval ratings all mutinying. So the whole Indian navy just kind of puts up its hands and says we're not following orders.
- [04:15]
Anita Anand
And a potential prospect of a repeat of 1857, which the British think of as primarily a mutiny. India thinks of it as the first War of Independence. But Britain and all the people making decisions think this is 1857 again.
- [04:29]
Sam Dalrymple
Yeah. So you've got all of this going on and you have kind of, you know, massive waves of communal violence after Direct Action Day spreading out across the country. And another key reason why the British pull out so quickly is that all the Indian army who they've been using to kind of put down rebellions in the past want to go home. They've just been at war for six years and you know, the last thing anyone wants is to suddenly be sent out to stay away from your family for even longer. You know, the public back in Britain has turned against using the army for any future conflicts. And the public in India has turned so against Britain, who during World War II had, you know, legalized machine gunning crowds in order to stop rebellions against British rule. And so this is complete crisis.
- [05:18]
Anita Anand
It's very Interesting reflection on what happens in Palestine the following year in 1948, in that if you think of how in previous conflicts the British had used Indian troops there. So when they're driving out Napoleon and forcing Napoleon's troops to surrender in whatever it is, 1809, they send east India Company troops to Egypt. And then again in the First World War, having failed to take Gaza, where the British are again facing the same troops that defeated them at Gallipoli, it's only when Indian troops, including the Bikaner Camel Corps and all these Rajput cavalry officers, turn up on the front line that they manage to take Gaza and break into Palestine under Allenby. So in both the previous rounds of conflict in the Middle East, Indian troops had been sent. And the fact that they're not there in 1948 is one of the reasons that things go so badly wrong.
- [06:04]
William Dalrymple
And it's not just at the troop level. You know, you've got the leadership who have a very different tune to play. Because you might remember in our Gandhi episodes, one of the chief recruiters from. For the British efforts in World War I was Gandhi, who told his countrymen, you will sign up. You must sign up. This is a just war we are fighting. Do it. However, most of the leadership of Congress spend most of the time in those war years of the Second World War in jail because they are fighting against the British. They are not cheerleading for the British. They are, in fact, leading the crusade against them. Now, look, this leads us very neatly to the man who's in the middle of this maelstrom, and that is Dickie Mountbatten. Lord Mountbatten, cousin of the King, relative of virtually anyone who's got blue blood in Europe. So tell us a little bit more about them in a nutshell.
- [06:52]
Sam Dalrymple
Sure. So Mountbatten is basically. It's a few weeks after Direct Action Day, when all this violence is spreading across India, that Prime Minister Atlee basically loses faith in the current Viceroy and decides he needs a new viceroy, Wavell.
- [07:07]
Anita Anand
Archibald Wavell, who wrote a rather nice book of poems that people still use other men's flowers that still you occasionally see on people's sort of lavatory libraries and things.
- [07:17]
Sam Dalrymple
But, yeah, so in December 1946, Atlee loses faith in Wavell and basically decides that we need a new Viceroy and we need to get Britain out of India, whether India is ready for it or not. And the man he chooses is Mountbatten, who is this kind of fascinatingly flamboyant, slightly ridiculous figure. He'd been to India before. He traveled with The Prince of Wales, where he'd met his wife Edwina. And they'd initially had a kind of whirlwind romance. But then by the end of the decade, it had turned into a sort of open relationship with both of them kind of sleeping around. I think Mountbatten later said, edwina and I spent all of our lives getting into other people's beds.
- [07:57]
Anita Anand
And not every. Not all of those beds, in the case of Mountbatten, were women. That. He was famously bisexual, wasn't he?
- [08:03]
William Dalrymple
Well, there's a CIA report. There is a line in a CIA document, I believe, which says that his proclivities went that way. And actually sort of. There have been a lot of lines drawn from that, particularly by. I think there's a historian called Andrew Lowney who says, no, that's right. It's proof that he was into very young boys as well, young men as well. But by and large, we. I mean, you know, may well have been bisexual. Don't know. But there's a. One line that. That whole thing from. From the Lanny thing, I think, is from a CIA report. But they. They were. I mean, it was an open marriage, flamboyantly so. And one where one Jawaharl Al Nehru said to. Passed in through the door towards Edwina rather than Dickie, one should point out. But during the war. So how do they sort of conduct themselves? What are they. What are they up to during the war, first of all?
- [08:48]
Sam Dalrymple
So they're running around a kind of bizarre range of things. They're collecting exotic pets. They get a Malayan honey bear nicknamed Rastus at one point. But they. I think they find purpose during the war. Edwina volunteers at air raid shelters and Mountbatten gets him put in charge of a ship. He's in the Navy, and he sinks it. He sinks it. Well, he doesn't sink. Gets sunk. But he's very good at pr, so he manages to create this kind of propaganda film featuring a young Richard Attenborough entitled In which We Serve, which ends up, I think, being nominated for the Best Picture at the Oscars and losing to Casablanca about this kind of heroic group of Navy men going down with their ship in the middle of the war.
- [09:29]
Anita Anand
And tell us, Sam, because I love this detail in Alex von Tunzelman's book. She goes on about how Mountbatten spent a lot of time design a special way of getting into white tie in 2 minutes flat so that he could appear.
- [09:45]
William Dalrymple
He sort of has his equerries timing him to see how quickly he can get in and out of this suit.
- [09:49]
Anita Anand
And he had a contraption that allowed him to do this. And so he would, you know, he would appear and greet a whole load of guests in a suit, disappear sort of behind a pillar and reappear with sort of a white bow tie and the full tails just two minutes later. Did you find any more details like that?
- [10:07]
William Dalrymple
The white suit?
- [10:08]
Sam Dalrymple
So, yeah, I mean, he had elasticated shoes which allowed him to, you know, get in and out very quickly. He had a simplex shirt that he could slide into, like a stretch suit. And all this makes his contemporaries see him as slightly ridiculous. So when he gets put in charge of Southeast Asia Command during the war and, you know, gets put in charge of a lot of the battles of Kohima and Imphal, fighting the Japanese on the Eastern Front, the US General Stillwell decides that Mountbatten's nothing more than a glamour boy with nice eyelashes because he's constantly this polished aristocrat, but who's slightly ridiculous. But anyway, so back to the point. So he gets chosen in December 1946, he gets chosen as the new Viceroy. He's terrified. He's not sure he particularly wants to go out there. He's convinced he's going to come back home with a bullet in his back again.
- [10:53]
Anita Anand
There's this fear that we forget that there's going to be an uprising against.
- [10:55]
Sam Dalrymple
The British any moment now.
- [10:57]
Anita Anand
Yeah. One whole part of Partition that, in a sense, goes right for the British, although we shouldn't really regard it as such, is that Mountbatten does get all the Brits out without barely a casualties. There's only about eight British casualties in the whole of Partition, but in the process, there is this complete holocaust of 1.5 million Indian deaths when Mountbatten goes out. He, of course, can't foresee this. And it could easily have ended up with a situation where you had 1857 rerun with the Brits being massacred.
- [11:26]
William Dalrymple
Yeah. But he doesn't underestimate his importance, Mountbatten, does he? Because, you know, he does talk about this, and when he writes about it later, he says, I realized that I had been made into the most powerful man on earth. One fifth of humanity. I held in my hand a power of life and death. So, you know, it's like looking back on it, he has a great sense of his own part in history. But when he arrives, I mean, you're quite right, Sam, he does walk into a maelstrom of violence. I think one of the headlines that you say, you know, as he. As he comes over, is 1,000 people killed in Pindi alone. So there is widespread violence. It is looking like it's going to get under control. How soon after his arrival does he start talking about a handover of power and who does he start talking to?
- [12:10]
Sam Dalrymple
It's kind of from day one, I think. So often when we think of partition, we imagine that the border creates the violence, but as we discussed last time, it's Direct Action day, it's a year earlier that the violence begins. And Mountbatten really considers all sorts of options from day one. He kind of goes and meets all the various leaders. He tries to meet Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah. He meets Sardar Patel, who's the new Indian Home Minister, who actually runs India's intelligence services throughout his entire vice royalty and controls Mountbatten's access to intelligence. This is the other thing that we forget is that by this point the Indian cabinet is largely non white. And so someone like Sadhar Patel, who's a congressman, can stop Mountbatten, can choose which bits of intelligence Mountbatten has intelligence.
- [12:59]
Anita Anand
Mountbatten gets to see exactly which is.
- [13:01]
Sam Dalrymple
Which is another majorly important thing.
- [13:03]
Anita Anand
And some areas of communal violence he definitely keeps from him, isn't he?
- [13:06]
Sam Dalrymple
That's the point.
- [13:07]
Anita Anand
Yeah.
- [13:07]
Sam Dalrymple
But so Mountbatten considers all sorts. He considers allowing every province in India complete independence and then they can choose later whether to federate. At one point he even considers creating a Kolkata Free City, which was a city state along the lines of what would later happen in Singapore, which, you know, would have been a very different Kolkata. But he's very much, he very much doesn't like the Jinnahs. He doesn't like Jinnah or his sister Fatima. He doesn't necessarily know this originally, but one of, I think the biggest finds that I found in the archives was a secret telegram to the Governor of Bengal in April 1947, where he says as much. He says, it is not for me to make Pakistan into a sensible scheme. I want it to be seen for what it is whilst giving Muslims everything to which they are entitled and every chance to work out their own salvation. And then he suggests perhaps they leave the door open to a united but independent Bengal that would be part of neither Pakistan nor Hindustan, saying, do you think Suharidi could bring this off?
- [14:06]
Anita Anand
So we should point out at this point, for those that maybe remember this or weren't listening to the last episode, that Jinnah, who had started off as a bit of a glamour boy himself, all dressed up in fancy suits with a fancy wife and an open top car has become this sort of rather embittered and closed off man. And you have a lovely quote about needing a fur coat. When you go into his presence, he was so chilly. Who was the author of that line?
- [14:32]
Sam Dalrymple
That's Sarojini Naidu. But the entire quote is actually, even though you need a fur coat every now and again, he's actually one of the sweetest men imaginable.
- [14:39]
William Dalrymple
Yes.
- [14:40]
Sam Dalrymple
And she's actually. The entire quote, she says he's actually.
- [14:43]
William Dalrymple
A laugh and then he's got a sense of humour. You just need to get through the polar ice cap. And he's a very funny, very warm, lovely. I mean, it's an astonishing quote. And I'd never read the full quote because everyone, you know, does quote the.
- [14:55]
Sam Dalrymple
Fur coat bit from what date is that? That's from the late 30s, but in the wake of Direct Action Day, she refers to him as Lucifer, the fallen angel who once promised to bring us into the great heaven of independence.
- [15:08]
Anita Anand
And this is really important. So you've got on one hand the Mountbatten's getting on so well with, with Nehru that these rumors begin to circulate about Edwina and Nehru while at the same time there is this very frosty relationship with the Jinnahs which has severe political implications for what follows that year.
- [15:28]
William Dalrymple
Right now I've got a question about what is to come. Because the notion in India is always that actually the British left, but they left trying to leave booby traps in their wake for the future of a prosperous free country. And that, you know, partition needn't have happened, but they caved when they shouldn't have caved. And also the decision not to involve any princely states in this partition plan was absolutely designed to create this divide and rule patchwork of dysfunction which would hobble a new country just as it was starting to walk. So I mean, let's unravel that. That's what Indians say even now. Let's talk about the princely states. What were they? Because most countries don't have them within their national boundaries. What was a princely state and who ran it?
- [16:15]
Sam Dalrymple
Sure. So by 1947, 1/3 of the Raj was still not part of British India, not actually constitutionally linked to British India, but were essentially protectorates that were under the protection of the Viceroy. And so these are states like Jaipur, Jodhpur, and had included states like Dubai and Nepal. And these were basically independent kingdoms run by monarchs, often more developed than British India, but often also, you know, severely underdeveloped and run by a feudal system which left Huge swathes of the population in poverty. They ranged dramatically. But, yes, this is. The other crucial thing is that in June, Mountbatten makes the announcement that he will be dividing British India into two dominions, India and Pakistan. Now, he doesn't say where Pakistan will be and where India will be. And the other crucial thing is that he will be dividing British India and that the story of the princely states, which we're going to discuss more next.
- [17:13]
Anita Anand
Episode and just give an idea of their landmass, Sam, and how much of the subcontinent they are.
- [17:18]
Sam Dalrymple
One third of the subcontinent. One third of the subcontinent. So everything, you know, entire Indian states today, everything from the whole of Telangana, the whole of Kashmir, the whole of Tripura, the whole of Manipur, the whole of Meghalaya and the whole of Rajasthan.
- [17:31]
William Dalrymple
And chunks and pitches and patches of Punjab as well, which is one of the most prosperous states.
- [17:37]
Sam Dalrymple
And so he announces that British India will be divided into two dominions and that all the princely states will then be able to choose which dominion they join. And ultimately, there's so much violence at this point that after about 20 different suggestions for how independence might happen, everyone finally, wearily accepts. And there's this photograph of Nehru, you know, looking horrified with himself but putting up his hand, finally agreeing to partition. And he later says, we were tired men and we were getting on in our years. The plan for partition offered a way out and we took it.
- [18:12]
William Dalrymple
So amidst all this maelstrom, uncertainty, violence, on the 14th and 15th August, both Pakistan and India raise their flags and they declare themselves free of British rule. It's meant to be the dawn of a brand new era of independence. And these are some of the words.
- [18:30]
Anita Anand
That were spoken long years ago. We made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge. Not wholly, but or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.
- [18:51]
William Dalrymple
Those are the words spoken by Nehru as the Indian flag went up. And, Sam, just the significance of this.
- [18:58]
Sam Dalrymple
I mean. So Mountbatten announces three days after the partition announcement, he says, I'm going to move forward the date for partition from the end of 1948 to just 77 days from now. And I think there's all sorts of stuff that's heaped on Mountbatten, accusations that this was all a kind of, you know, great conspiracy that I don't quite buy. But the thing that you can clearly pin on him in terms of the damage that he caused during partition is rushing it making it go from, you know, when in the earlier episodes we talked about the separation of Burma and the separation of the Arabian states. These were partitions that were meticulously planned over six years, five and six years. Whereas in the case of 1947, he says that you've got 77 days.
- [19:44]
Anita Anand
Sam, many people say that the reason for this speed was not that things were going to spin out of control, but that Mountbatten wanted to get back to England to get some plum job in the Admiralty. Do you believe that theory?
- [19:58]
Sam Dalrymple
No, to be honest, I think that there are many reasons that he speeds things up and there's all sorts of things on his mind. Far more in his letters is the fact that, as I said, you know, he doesn't have access to the intelligence services and he's worried that Britain's going to be blamed for a bloodbath over which he has no control. And I think that's. He's worried about Britain's reputation and trying to just get Britain out so he can place the blame on someone else. And crucially, no one has any idea where Pakistan will be. There's a map of that's published just a month before independence where every state has a kind of, you know, it's a map of each of the provinces of India and then lines to each of the provinces saying this might become part of Pakistan. We don't know. Potentially Punjab will be part of Pakistan, potentially Delhi will be part of Pakistan. Do we know if Hyderabad is going to be part of Pakistan? Who knows if Kolkata will be the capital of Pakistan?
- [20:51]
William Dalrymple
Yeah. And these lines are so incendiary because, I mean, quite apart from, you know, putting the jewels in the crown up for auction, things like, you know, who gets Delhi, who gets Calcutta, they are lines that draw from a river to a dam, you know, in between a village or, you know, they are so sort of haphazardly drawn through a populace of people who have lived together and they are impractical. And they're also, I mean, eventually it becomes the gift of a man of whom it's famously said, never went east of Paris. I mean, I think I'm saying that. Right, right. Cliff. Cyril Radcliffe, this sort of, you know, quintessentially sort of pink kneed, pink foreheaded bureaucrat who doesn't know India, who really hasn't, and he has to sweat it out miserably in heat, trying to sort out in record time the future of millions of people.
- [21:38]
Sam Dalrymple
Yeah. And bizarrely, this was considered, you know, a plus point for him. It's Jinnah, actually, who suggests getting Radcliffe to divide the land because of the fact that he doesn't know India, so he'll be an unbiased arbitrator. And this is, I think, the key thing to remember is that you've got committees proliferating, staffed by equal numbers of Muslim and non Muslim bureaucrats. And the exercise that they're being asked to do is kind of. It's enormous. They're dividing everything from rivers to stationary sets. And so it's not just land that's being divided. Some bureaucrats get asked to consider whether to partition the Kennel Club, which you know about Beagles. The Encyclopedia Britannica is divided up so. So that A to K volumes go to India and L to Z goes to Pakistan.
- [22:21]
Anita Anand
And Antiquities, you say, this terrible gnarling.
- [22:24]
Sam Dalrymple
Of the Mohenjo Daro necklace, which was one of the great finds from the Indus Valley civilization, this beautiful gold thread with, you know, lapis lazuli and opals and topaz, et cetera, which was from 4500 BC. Who knows which country is going to get it? So they decide to snip the golden thread and give equal number of beads to India and equal number of beads to Pakistan. So even history is going to be divided.
- [22:50]
William Dalrymple
It's just such a powerful symbol that a thing of beauty is kind of, you know, mutilated in order to satisfy this rush of division without taking stock. This is also sort of tragic, apart from sort of the wrecking of heirlooms that goes on. Let's talk about the human cost of this, because his speed to avoid having blood on his hands is. Is what precipitates the greatest amount of bloodshed. So you have people now who are reading in the papers every day of where the dividing line might be. It might go through their villages, their towns, their families, their mothers, their fathers might be on the wrong side of the line. And this massive migration begins, which is very poorly policed. I mean, policing is may not be the right word because it's not police, it's soldiers who are meant to keep the peace between these long lines of people. Let's just talk about just the scale of this. I mean, we've covered partition before, but still, I think it's worth mentioning the greatest exodus of humanity the world has ever known. So just talk a little bit about how that, that works and then we'll take a break and come back.
- [23:56]
Sam Dalrymple
Sure. So by the end of the year, the number of people being rehabilitated by the Ministry of Rehabilitation is close to 20 million. Which is more than the contemporary populations of Ireland, Greece, Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Enormous numbers of people displaced, not necessarily just over the border, but just people displaced from their homes. And partly this is to do with religious violence spreading. But I think people tend to have this image of a lot of the violence being neighbors turning on each other, which is true. There's a guy who was interviewed by Urvashi Batalia, this Sikh man called Harjit, who says, I cannot explain it, but one day our entire village took off to a nearby Muslim village on a killing spree. We simply went mad. And it has cost me 50 years of remorse, of sleepless nights. I cannot forget the faces of those we killed. So there's all sorts of people like that. But also, I think, far more important and far more visible in the archives and in people's testimonies are all of these paramilitary groups. So during the 30s and 40s, you had groups like the Muslim League, National Guards, which were basically kind of, you know, trained to protect Muslims from Hindu mobs. And you have groups like the rss, which continues to play a large role in India today, that, you know, trains Hindus to protect themselves, teaches them how to use Latis, teaches them regimental kind of marches, etc. But very often it's paramilitary groups who hear that Hindus or Muslims are in trouble a few villages over and then go on a killing spree.
- [25:27]
William Dalrymple
And can I just also point out, just from, you know, personal history, a lot of people are given the heads up by their neighbours who are of a different religion. So I know certainly in my family it's the case. One wing of my family was saved because Muslim neighbours came and said, you know what, you're on the list, you're next on a list, you need to get out of here. And so sort of hide them and take them as far as they can so that they can escape. And you have countless stories. I mean, anybody I know who is the same color as me, and it's from, particularly from Punjab, which is one of the most riven states during this partition, has a story like that. So you did have, you know, you did have neighbours certainly getting swept up in the violence and turning on each other. But you equally had people who said, you know what, you're my brother, I don't understand, I don't understand what's happening and you need to get your kids out. Both those things can be true.
- [26:13]
Sam Dalrymple
The other thing that I'd emphasize here is Punjab saw the most violence and so I think gets highlighted the most. So Punjab was where most of the army came from. And so a lot of the people who were involved in the violence had just been trained in arms during World War II, had been on the front lines, and so knew how to use weapons and had often weapons privately at home. And so the violence there was far worse. But I think that the migration is visible in every corner of the subcontinent, and I think it's to a degree that is often not fully understood. One of the areas that sees the biggest demographic change is the Indian state of Tripura and northeast India, which is majority tribal communities that is suddenly overwhelmed with refugees. You have people in South India en masse, Muslims from Tamil Nadu and Hyderabad migrating to places like Karachi. You have half of the population of Bombay empties and heads off to Karachi, heads off to Pakistan. And I think that we underestimate the fact that this is from all across the subcontinent. And I remember from finding it, like, bizarre that you can go to towns like Almora in the Himalayas today, in Uttarakhand, and find a whole bazaar of Muslim Havelis that were abandoned at Partition. You can go to Hyderabad and see all these old stately homes that had been abandoned overnight. There's all sorts of reasons for why people move. There's obviously people fleeing their homes. Some people have a millenarian desire for, you know, a religious homeland. Across the border. Many Dalits, untouchables, migrate because it offers a liberating change of status. And crucially, many Muslims, such as the grandfather of Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan, actually migrate away from Pakistan to India out of the desire to live in a secular state. And so you have all sorts of reasons. It's not as simple as everyone fleeing their home, escaping. There's a million different migrations going on at once in a sense, Sam, but.
- [28:09]
Anita Anand
To return to the Punjab and just to look a bit more closely at what you just said about the armed nature of much of the population there, it isn't just that they have army training, and it isn't just that they have access to weapons. You actually see them being sort of drilled and organized into military units, and you have organized attacks by armed men who are drilled and knowledgeable about how to take an enemy position. Attacking villages of unarmed people.
- [28:37]
Sam Dalrymple
Exactly. And I think there was one interview that I was doing in a town called Dujana in what's now Haryana, the state that borders Delhi. And we were basically told, you know, they often described partition as medieval. In Dujana town, it literally was a siege. And all the Muslims gathered within the old walled city and began firing medieval cannons. Out at, well regimented Hindu and Sikh militias that had gathered in military formation outside of the walls. It wasn't random violence is what I want to emphasise.
- [29:10]
Anita Anand
I guess I once did a story, a similar story of a village under siege the other side of the border on the Pakistani side. And two old men who now live near me in Delhi were sweet makers and they defended their village because there was only one entrance to the village. It was in an old walled fortress. And they defended the village by having their, their big degs of hot fat, which they flied the Jalebies in and they would pour them out over, pour this hot fat, boiling fat onto anyone that tried to come into the village. And until they got, till they got rescued.
- [29:43]
William Dalrymple
That's, I mean, that's proper medieval, that is. Well, look, we're going to take a break now, but I just want to point one thing out. Going to the break. All of these people who are fleeing their homes and homes that have been theirs and their families for generations, there is this maelstrom of violence and yet nobody knows where the partition line will be right now.
- [30:08]
Unknown
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- [30:47]
Sam Dalrymple
We got a lot of work to do.
- [30:48]
Unknown
Alien Earth on Hulu.
- [30:50]
Anita Anand
This ship collected monsters.
- [30:52]
Unknown
And Final destination Bloodlines on HBO Max.
- [30:55]
Sam Dalrymple
Death is coming for our family.
- [30:58]
Unknown
The Disney Hulu HBO Max bundle planned starting at $16.99 a month. All these and more streaming soon. Visit Disney huluhbomaxbundle.com for details.
- [31:12]
William Dalrymple
Welcome back. So just before the break, Sam, we were talking about the fact that, you know, there was just unprecedented out of control violence. Mountbatten in a hurry because he wanted to avoid unprecedented violence. I mean, the whole thing is sort of a vicious circle. And yet nobody knew where the line was drawn. And they only find out two days after independence. That's right, isn't it?
- [31:33]
Sam Dalrymple
Literally for the first two days, there's particularly a diary by a man called Fikhr Tonsvi, who's a Hindu with a Muslim sounding name who lived in what's now Lahore, in what's now Pakistan. And he's one of the great kind of satirists of the time, but he writes a diary that's been published recently. And it's rather amazing because he literally writes, you know, on the day of Independence, everyone's waving flags, but no one's quite sure which flag to wave. And it's only three days later that, sorry, two days later that he writes about huddling around a radio with his friend Mumtaz, who's a Muslim, to listen to the broadcast of the Radcliffe line. And it's all over radio. It's not like watching the news where you've got a kind of visual map. It's over the radio and they're trying to figure out where this line will be. And they've got a map in front of them and a pen. And as they say, this city has fallen to this. This city. They try to figure out where the border might be. And even then, it's still a bit unclear. They have to wait for newspapers to come out a few days later that often don't arrive because of the Partition violence. And so everyone eventually hears that Lahore is part of Pakistan, and they look outside and see crescent flags of freedom waving down the street, is what he writes. But then he writes, the next morning, he wakes up and walks down the street, and about a third of the houses down his street have massive padlocks placed over the doors as the Hindu and Sikh families have begun leaving because they've realized that it might no longer be safe for him. He writes how, you know, his friend suddenly begins crying when he learns that his hometown, Batallah, Mumtaza's hometown, it has ended up in India and will be in a different country. And meanwhile, Fikhra Taunsvi is wondering how Nankarn as Ayeb, the birthplace of Sikhism, has ended up in Pakistan, you know, and will be separated from Sikhs. This is a story that's all across the country, sacred sites falling on the wrong side of the border. You often get entire areas being traded off. So, for example, you know, India really needed a road into the mountains, or it might need, you know, access to certain rivers in order to make it a sustainable country. And so I think, you know, Chittagong Hill Tracts, for example, which is Buddhist majority, is given to Pakistan despite 2% of its population being Muslim. And this is one of the things Radcliffe's border leaves 42% of Bengal's non Muslims in Pakistan, which ensures, in a sense, that the political fiasco that prompted partition. The inability to overcome communal politics is set to continue on. This line does not resolve this problem.
- [34:06]
Anita Anand
And do you think this is because Radcliffe is ignorant that he doesn't understand the importance of a great sacred site like one of the great Sikh shrines in the Punjab going to one country or the other? Or is it just. It's a rush job or it's just inherent in the idea of partition?
- [34:21]
Sam Dalrymple
Well, I think it's inherent in the idea of partition. The crucial thing is that South Asia did not have, you know, Muslim districts and Hindu districts. In every district there was a mixed population and so there was no border that could have satisfied everyone. And I think we forget what a lot of the cities looked like. Karachi was Hindu majority, whilst Delhi was essentially a Muslim city. Kolkata was assumed by Jinnah to potentially be the future capital of Pakistan because it was the capital of, of the largest Muslim majority province, Bengal.
- [34:55]
Anita Anand
And was it itself Muslim majority? It was, wasn't it?
- [34:57]
Sam Dalrymple
No, it was Hindu majority, but in a Muslim majority province.
- [35:01]
William Dalrymple
Right. So look, I mean, one of the things that is often hotly debated, even now, is whether Jinnah wanted a secular state for new Pakistan and therefore it shouldn't have mattered so much if, you know, Buddhists find themselves in a secular Pakistan. You know, what's the difference if you're in India or you're in Pakistan? I mean, what is the evidence of what he wanted and what he got? Being different.
- [35:27]
Sam Dalrymple
So Jinnah is a difficult person to write about because he says he's always preaching to the choir. So he says different things depending on who he's speaking to. And he'll speak to some Muslim lobby and say, you know, we will create the new Medina. But then in a speech to Karachi's minorities, he has a very particular speech which is, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the state. And I personally feel that that is kind of the Pakistan that he'd envisaged. He basically wanted a line that, you know, allowed Muslims in one part more political precedents than Hindus in other parts.
- [36:08]
William Dalrymple
But, I mean, it sort of. He doesn't even manage to convince his daughter, it turns out, because Dina, Jinnah's daughter, says, actually, I'm not coming to Pakistan. Yes. And this lovely letter that she writes. My darling Papa, first of all, I congratulate you. You got Pakistan. How hard you've worked for it. I Do hope you're keeping well. I get lots of news from you, from the local newspapers in Bombay. Are you coming back here? That's. That's. I mean, a little girl asking her daddy, are you coming back here?
- [36:34]
Anita Anand
How old is she?
- [36:34]
William Dalrymple
Take care of yourself, Papa. Don't. She's not little, but, I mean, just the voice of it. She's married, She's a grown woman. But, you know, the little girl voice.
- [36:41]
Anita Anand
Comes out and is that why she hasn't gone to Pakistan? Because she's married to the Wadiyas?
- [36:45]
Sam Dalrymple
And. Yeah, so again, Jinnah had married a Parsi and so does. So does his daughter Dina marries, yeah, the Parasiwadia family in Bombay and never moves. And there's this extraordinary. I think it's. Mountbatten's press secretary writes how on Independence Day, Jinnah is strangely absent mentally from the occasion. He's not celebrating and he's looking rather sad. And he wonders whether it's to do with his daughter, not.
- [37:09]
Anita Anand
He's got no family with him. Yeah, he's got his sister, that's all.
- [37:12]
Sam Dalrymple
But not his daughter.
- [37:13]
William Dalrymple
I think he doesn't see her again after pain.
- [37:16]
Sam Dalrymple
He never sees her again.
- [37:17]
William Dalrymple
They never see each other again.
- [37:18]
Sam Dalrymple
But he keeps his house in Bombay. He thinks he's going to be able to cross over. No one saw it going as badly as it did.
- [37:26]
William Dalrymple
It doesn't get much worse than what becomes the sort of creation of east and West Pakistan. And again, we have to focus on Punjab for this. So tell us a little bit about how we end up with a new nation state that is divided by hundreds of miles of another nation state.
- [37:44]
Sam Dalrymple
So there were Muslim majorities in the east and the west, and Pakistan is carved out of the Muslim majority regions of the subcontinent. And so you end up with, you know, basically the area that's modern day Bangladesh in the east and the area of modern day Pakistan in the West. And they are one country in 1947.
- [38:00]
Anita Anand
But no connection between them.
- [38:02]
Sam Dalrymple
No. Well, they've got boats and planes and that, you know, boats were the main way of getting around in the 40s, we forget. And there are all sorts of countries that have similar.
- [38:11]
Anita Anand
It's a long chug in a tug to go Karachi to Dhaka.
- [38:15]
Sam Dalrymple
We forget how much that was the main way of getting around back then and the fact that several other countries have made that work. You know, Malaysia is made up of, you know, the Malay Peninsula, plus a bit of Borneo, for example. But I think that there is definitely something different about the way that the refugee crisis works in the east and west and in the east most of the minorities don't leave. And so the area that later becomes Bangladesh has most of its Hindus remain. Whereas in Punjab there is so much violence that eventually they are forced, India and Pakistan are forced to agree to a wholesale exchange of the population. So all Hindus and Sikhs have to leave the Pakistani side of Punjab and all Muslims have to leave the Indian side. And crucially, I think it's the first Pakistani Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan, who literally writes Pakistan is so overwhelmed with refugees now that it does not want Muslims from regions other than East Punjab to leave their homeland and come to Pakistan. The partition of the country was done on the principle that minorities will remain in their regions. And this is a dramatic voltefast for the leader of a self proclaimed homeland for Indian Muslims. But times are desperate and literally half of the Pakistani government are operating out of shipping crates.
- [39:34]
William Dalrymple
Literally, literally out of shipping crates.
- [39:36]
Sam Dalrymple
Literally. There is a deep sense amongst a lot of Pakistanis that Pakistan was not given any of the major cities of the Raj. It's not given Delhi and it's not given Kolkata, both of which it was kind of assumed it would be given. It's given Lahore and Karachi. But you know, East Bengal, later, Bangladesh isn't even given the capital of Bengal. It's stranded in the east with Dhaka, which is a nice historic city but you know, not one of the great. It's not got all the bureaucratic buildings needed to run a country.
- [40:13]
Anita Anand
But I think, yeah, you hear complaints from Pakistanis too, that the stuff that was sent to them was designed to hobble them. I've heard many Pakistani bureaucrats of that generation talking about how they were meant to get, for example, kit for the army, but only boots for the left foot would arrive.
- [40:30]
William Dalrymple
I've heard that. That's right. No right foot coverage for you. Yes, I've heard that.
- [40:35]
Anita Anand
And similar things with bureaucratic kits that as you say, no stationary sets, no offices, desks, but no chairs there was in the division. Pakistanis felt that it was deliberately designed to sort of make the state of failure at birth.
- [40:51]
William Dalrymple
How much truth to that, Sam? Cause that, that is fascinating.
- [40:55]
Sam Dalrymple
I think it's a mix. I think that for example, certain members of Congress, when they take over the Indian state, start arguing that they should refuse to send over money to Pakistan and equipment to Pakistan. Now that they've inherited this thing, they shouldn't send money to their enemy. Who's these separatists who've taken half of our country is how a lot of. And so Particularly Sadar Patel, the Home Minister who was running the intelligence services and stopping Mountbatten from having hero of.
- [41:25]
Anita Anand
The current government, who've just erected the largest statue in South Asia to this man.
- [41:29]
Sam Dalrymple
Not the largest statue in South Asia, the largest statue in the world that's about four times the size of the Statue of Liberty. And he very much argues that why are we offering to send all this money in our bank vaults to Pakistan if, you know, Hindus and Sikhs are being massacred there and shouldn't we use this as leverage over the Pakistani government? And one of the reasons that the man who assassinates Gandhi, Gotse, does so is because he sees Gandhi protesting this. He sees Gandhi basically doing a fast to try and convince Siddharth Patel to hand over the right foot boots. The right foot boots and money that was meant to be sent to Pakistan. And Gandhi saying, we need to be fair and we need to send this stuff over because it's only then that we will be able to have peace with our new neighbour.
- [42:16]
William Dalrymple
Have peace. If you've got a comfortable neighbour, you have peace. Now, can I just make one little observation about Sardar Patel? So, I mean, most people, I guess, who are interested in this part of history, in this part of the world, may have seen Atam Bras Gandhi and Sardara Patel in Atam Bharas Gandhi, who's this great figure for Hindu nationalism even today and is sort of, you know, the wily deal maker who will go on to, you know, and we'll talk about this in the next episode, tell Princely States to sign over to India. And is that is the muscle behind this was played by a Muslim, Si Jafre, and played, you know, just, first of all, let that played brilliantly by Sire Jafrey, who was a Muslim. And Sire Jafrey, I have a little knowledge of this because there used to be a reunion of Hill Station schools people, whether they're Brits or, you know, white British or brown British, they would come together for all those hill stations in the British Raj where they went to school. And Siah Jaffrey was one such, and he went to an entirely mixed school where like lots of his sort of fellow students who are all these good old boys, Jennifer, his wife, was there and was utterly delightful introducing me to people. And they were talking about how naughty Sa Jafre was sneaking out of the school so he could go to the bazaars and bring them all sweets and things like that. And so he's the one who plays Sardar Patel and he is a Muslim and that would not Happen today? I don't think I would, I would suggest, but there you are. That was just a little bit sort of dogleg because we like those on here. So, you know, so Gandhi is arguing, look, you have to have a comfortable neighbour or we'll never have peace. And how unpopular I know with Godse and the extreme wing of what we would call Hindutva. Hates it, what he's saying, and hates everything he stands for and hates the idea he thinks there's going to be a porous border and people are going to be able to go back and forth and thinks he gives too much to Jinnah. But how much? Is that the prevailing mood in India or is it just a minority who think this?
- [44:09]
Sam Dalrymple
I think no one knows what's going to happen. And so you get all sorts of regions where there's absolute mass migration, for example, but then you've got a huge number of people who do stay put. You know, today I think Sindh in Southern Pakistan remains 10% Hindu, just like, you know, a lot of North Indian provinces remain 10% Muslim. I think what's present day Bangladesh has an even higher percentage of Hindus and Sikhs and later suffers under Pakistani rule as a result of that. The Pakistani government perceives East Pakistan as too Hindu. But no one knows what a future relationship looks like. As we'll discuss in the next episode, within a few months they go to war over the princely state of Kashmir. And this is a war that creates the conflict that we've seen play out just recently, you know, the India Pakistan hostility. But I think at the time there is very much a wing that says we will never be able to have a good relationship with these people on both sides of the border. And then there's a huge number of people saying if our bureaucrats can work together, if our armies can work together, then we can create peace. You know, once this migration finishes, once we restore the peace, now that we have inherited these governments, India and Pakistan from the government of the Raj, well, now that we've inherited the military might of the Raj and the bureaucracy of the Raj, potentially we can create a South Asia of more poorest borders. And I think if you look at Nehru's comments just a few weeks after independence, he does talk about potentially United nations of South Asia emerging in the not too distant future. And likewise, Jinnah does not sell his house in Bombay and his daughter remains there. So I think amongst the high up leadership there is a sense that, you know, this too shall pass and eventually India and Pakistan will be able to move beyond this. Obviously that's not the case.
- [46:07]
William Dalrymple
Can I ask you about one project that is very close to your heart? And I just think it's such an extraordinary, wonderful thing that you have been doing with your friend, Project Dastan, because you've been trying to reconnect survivors of Partition, the displaced whose lives changed utterly on one day in August. What kind of things have you been doing? And just explain what Dastan is.
- [46:33]
Sam Dalrymple
Sure. So this began about seven years ago when I was in Oxford with a Indian friend and a Pakistani friend and we realized that, you know, unfortunately, thanks to the enduring hostilities between India and Pakistan that emerged from Partition, there is still no tourism agreement. And so the millions, tens of millions of people displaced can still never go and see their homes. Families can never see where they're actually from. But meeting in Britain, there's this absurd sense that, A, it's absurd that you have to meet in the coloniser's country in order to meet someone from across the border, but B, actually a lot of these homelands are really easy for people on the other side to access. They're not lost, people can go and visit them. And so, you know, Sparsh could probably never get to visit his ancestral home, my friend, but our friend Sadia could easily drive there in an hour and find his old ancestral home and take photos of the school that his granddad had been to, the mosque. And so what we were doing was using virtual reality. We created teams in India and Pakistan and used virtual reality to scan, you know, the old houses, the old mosques, the old temples, the old gurdwaras that people had left behind 75 years ago and allow them essentially to virtually travel back across the border to where they came from. So we were doing that for the 75th anniversary of partition in 2022, and the aim was to do this for 75 families before the 75th anniversary in the event. Covid slightly stumped that, but we managed to do it for about 30, 40 families.
- [48:01]
Anita Anand
Sam, maybe just to conclude, you could tell that story about Sparsh, who you mentioned, your friend, you both went to Sparsh's village in the frontier. Tell us that story.
- [48:12]
Sam Dalrymple
So Sparsh was my co founder, along with our friends Sadia and Amina. And Sparsh had assumed that you would never be able to cross over into Pakistan because of the way that these things are. But eventually he applied for a visa and got it. And particularly this was after having worked with the museums in Lahore, etcetera, On Project Dustaden. So we managed to get references from across the Border and help. They helped him get a visa. And so we traveled together to his ancestral home. And it was down this kind of bumpy track on the border of Punjab and the Northwest Frontier. So you could see the hills of the Northwest Frontier in the distance. And we're getting closer and closer and closer. It was the kind of last village before the frontier, essentially. And we went, you know, Sparsh had heard the story of his grandfather, had been saved by the Muslim family. They had heard, as you said, Anita, they heard that a mob was coming to get them. And this man called Shere Khan had kept them in the back of their house and, you know, looked after them and said, I will. I won't let anyone touch you. And eventually managed to smuggle them across the border into India. And anyway, so we arrived in this village with Sparsh dressed in the kind of, you know, the outfit that his grandfather told him that he used to wear. And, of course, they were actually arriving in the village in the 1930s outfit. It was a bit like arriving in London dressed in a kind of, you know, a top hat, bowler hat and a walking stick. So everyone completely befuddled what this kind of white guy and his Hindu friend dressed as a kind of 1930s Dandy was doing in that village. Sparsh said, you know, I'm here to track down this family and try to find my old house. And it turned out that the person that we were speaking to was Shere Khan's son. And he took us to the old house that Spasha's family had lived in for generations, showed which fields had belonged to Sparsha's family for generations, and then took us in for tea. And right until Sparsh's grandfather passed away, his grandfather and Shere Khan's son had a WhatsApp group together where they'd kind of, you know, the kind of Baylor reunion. And it was deeply emotional. Sparsh picked up some pebbles from the village, which he made into jewelry, family heirlooms for his family going down the generations, because he was always saying, you know, my family doesn't have archives, et cetera. We lost everything in Partition, and there's nothing that we have from Bayla to show where we came from. But so he wanted to pick up something from Baela and make it into heirlooms for the next generations. You know, three, four generations from now, they'll still have a piece of bala with them, even if, you know, the relationship between India and Pakistan worsens again. And, you know, even if his kids can never visit Bela. They'll always have a piece of Bayla with them.
- [50:38]
William Dalrymple
I mean, I have to say, and we're going to have to draw this to a close and we are going to carry on with this and of course, in this series. And if you can't wait for the next one, join the club. Empirepod uk.com empirepod uk.com and you get this all in one go. If that's how you like listening and you like binging us. And who could blame you for that? But just a final observation before we leave you this connection with Earth. Dharti. You know, they call it dharti in India and Zamin is the Urdu word for exactly the same thing. But it is much more than just the Earth. It is who you are, where you have grown from, where your, your forebears have grown from, and the number of people I know who have been lucky enough to travel across the border. And I count myself as one who find it impossible to leave without a scoop of Earth. And I have one too, you know, in Lahore. Picked up a handful of Earth and brought it back with me because I thought, you know, this is, this, this is the stuff my grandfather used to walk on. So, yeah, just the emotional level of this still resonates today. Anyway, look, what's next on the agenda then, William?
- [51:41]
Anita Anand
So we have got the princes, and as Sam said, is it a third of India? How much of India is under the princely states?
- [51:48]
Sam Dalrymple
A third. A third of India is in the princely states. And if you look at the maps of India and Pakistan on Independence Day, they're missing the entirety of Rajasthan, the entirety of Gujarat, half of what, modern day Pakistan. A third of modern day India is not part of India and Pakistan on Independence Day.
- [52:05]
Anita Anand
This is the bit of the story that isn't often told. How much of the line of the border was not actually drawn by this unfortunate Cyril Radcliffe, who had seven weeks to divide an entire subcontinent, but was actually divided by the princes, who had three options. They could go with India, they could go with Pakistan, or they could choose independence. That was the idea. So that's a story that is less well known. I think many of you will have heard versions of the story we've told in this episode before, but I think the next episode will be a complete surprise to many. So it's goodbye from me, William Durimple.
- [52:40]
William Dalrymple
And goodbye from me, Anita Arnand.