Getting Out: Learning from Past Exit Strategies
Bhargava, Rajeev
Rajeev Bhargava: India ScHOLARLY WRITING explains British withdrawal from India in terms of a crisis of the colonial state precipitated by Britain's expansive involvement in the Second World War...
...Everyone became the "other...
...But once widespread violence erupted, it was hard not to conclude that the two states were viable only when populations were ethnically segregated...
...It is surprising that Nehru was not hailed as a tragic hero during the process of partition . A THIRD REASON why the Indian leadership accepted early British withdrawal was a mistrust of the British readiness and ability to stem intercommunal violence...
...Did political actors taking these decisions foresee the looming moral disaster...
...As Sucheta Mahajan has noted, many British officials were happy to "pack their bags and leave the Indians to stew in their own juice...
...One cannot make a plausible and persistent claim for independence and then, when push comes to shove, not back it with self-confidence . In normal circumDISSENT IWinter 2009 .41 stances when there are reasonable prospects for peace, when the economy is on the upswing, and when one already has a fairly long experience of administration, effective governance by first-timers is not that difficult...
...He wishes to thank Rajeshwari Balasubramian and Shruti Murlidharan for research assistance and Tani Sandhu for helpfulsuggestions on this manuscript . Works cited in this article include Sucheta Mahajan, Independence and Partition: The Erosion of Colonial Power in India, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000, p. 199...
...Mohammed Ali Jinnah, too, faced this problem . He had been initially against the partition of Punjab and Bengal on the ground that it might lead to large-scale collective violence, but as the prospect of power neared, these fears receded...
...It helped Britain to save face-to tell the world that it did not exit as a defeated power, with empty hands...
...That they are under a promise to do . But, for keeping it and giving it shape, we have to look to ourselves ." He added that in his opinion "we are unable to think coherently whilst the British Power is still functioning in India . Its function is not to change the map of India...
...Fearful of burgeoning Russian influence in the area between Turkey and India, and worrying that the Indian National Congress might be susceptible to such influence, Britain felt that a concessive stance toward the demand for a separate state of Pakistan would better protect British interests in the subcontinent...
...What explains the timing of the withdrawal...
...For one, American pressure on Britain-dictated by similar neo-imperial considerations but also by its own struggle for independence-made some difference . Winston Churchill's surprising defeat in the postwar elections seemed to have tilted domestic opinion away from those less favorably disposed to Indian independence...
...Unwilling to take responsibility for tackling the demons emerging in the subcontinent, Britain was keen to quit as soon as possible...
...Personal ambitions affected smaller but no less important details . Stanley Wolpert has argued that Viceroy Louis Mountbatten's strong disposition toward a speedy withdrawal was not entirely unrelated to his own professionally motivated desire to leave India...
...It is true, of course, that the primary concern at such times is life itself, but fear that one might die is not the only emotion that grips potential victims...
...Why did Indian leaders acquiesce to the withdrawal at 40 . DISSENT I Winter 2009 a time when the fear of collective violence was so pervasive...
...But this argument does not fully wash . Though they had the ability to analyze at least some of the dimensions of the problem, the British appeared not to have put their mind to it...
...Alas, the scale of the violence was to be so huge and the reality on the ground so bleak that any assertion that the situation could be managed was bound to be proved false immediately...
...In Bengal during the Great Calcutta Killings, the government showed a complete lack of wí11 to curb the violence . This connects with another issue . Did the British envisage the violence and the other consequences of their withdrawal...
...The multi-layered, wishful thinking of the Congress Party needs to be probed...
...On the evidence of the British withdrawal from the Indian subcontinent, it would be foolhardy to expect any imperial power to be collectively guided by morality...
...What were its moral costs...
...1037-1038...
...However, when communal disturbances occur daily, the economy is completely destabilized, and there is palpable danger of civil war, one must take a giant leap of faith...
...There might be individual cases of morally praiseworthy action, but it is hard to imagine that a system of power based on an ideology of occupation, exploitation, and superiority would incorporate moral considerations . Under the circumstances, it is left for the colonized people and their leaders to be cautious and perceptive in their understanding of the "real" and "actual" interests of the imperial power while negotiations for withdrawal are underway...
...X, pp...
...They thought that anxiety and uncertainty about the future in the minds of ordinary people lay at the heart ofintercommunalviolence...
...Why was their departure moved up by over a year-from June 1948 to August 1947...
...Could displacement have been averted and the mass killings prevented if withdrawal had been delayed...
...For some, economic reasons are crucial here...
...2008...
...nor did it acknowledge that the Indian Civil Service in 1947 was in a tangle . Around 55 percent of the elite service was either retiring, uncommitted, or on the move . As Robin Jeffrey has shown, this was not considered by the British as an important problem to be addressed at the time of partition...
...The government had both the intelligence and the resources to understand the complex situation on the ground...
...Gandhi, too, had scant faith in the British . At a prayer meeting, Gandhi famously said that "ít was not for the British to give India freedom...
...He decided not to implement martial law in the region and overall showed an attitude of resignation . On other occasions, he made some bizarre suggestions: if necessary, he said, even tanks and planes could be used to contain violence in the "rabbit warrens of the towns...
...RAJEw BHARGAVA is director and senior fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi . His publications include Secularism and Its Critics (1998) and Politics and Ethics of the Indian Constitution, ed...
...Did the British have information about the extent and depth of violence once they announced the decision that the country would be partitioned...
...If they had adequate intelligence reports, what measures were taken to quell the violence...
...His presence in the political process at this time of transition would have been vital, but it was not to be, and this had profound and tragic consequences . Focus on the ethical dimension of political actions requires especially during moments of transition-uncluttered thinking, not gut reactions . Here the Congress leadership faltered-handicapped by a simplistic belief that a direct and clear announcement of partition would help reduce communal violence...
...India and Burma Committee...
...Assurances from the state about safety and security could not match the horror of seeing friends mutate into murderers...
...As the future wielders of power turned to issues of real politics, ethical considerations were steadily minimized . This is not a criticism of Nehru and Patel...
...Every Congress leader concurred with Nehru and Patel on this...
...But the scale of the violence and the extent of damage by the organized groups could not be assessed by them-and there is nothing to suggest that the intelligence reports available to the British were shared with the Indians...
...There is the pain of losing a home, which is not the same as loss of material property...
...A Conservative Party in power probably would have delayed withdrawal, but the Labour Party hesitated less because independence rang true to its own values...
...and The Punjab Boundary Force and the Problem of Order, August 1947,"ModernAsian Studies,Vol.8, No...
...A peaceful transfer of population was impossible unless the population was already segregated...
...The complex chain of emotions triggered by the prospect of displacement and dispossession brought many to the brink of violence and barbarism . The British government and the Congress Party framed the issue in terms of episodic communal violence-an outsider's perspective that hardly got to the heart of the matter...
...Second, an occupying power never leaves with egg on its face and must appear, at the very least, to exit on its own terms . By the end of the Second World War, Britain knew that its exit from India was imminent . But the formal end of the empire did not mean that the British were prepared to relinquish substantive control over the region, and this consideration was to have a significant impact on the future...
...Everything moved rapidly...
...In times of transition, this difficulty multiplies a hundredfold and makes it tough for even ethically minded politicians to be steady and consistent...
...Neither had anticipated the spiraling violence sparked off by mutual fear...
...Indeed, Churchill stressed the moral responsibility of the British Empire in helping to shape a stable and violence-free dominion...
...4, (1974), pp...
...Business was declining, the manufacturing sector was affected by strikes, and landlords feared impending peasant uprisings . Under these conditions, both the Indian bourgeoisie and the landlords were eager to see a government more amenable to their influence . There is a grain of truth here, but this explanation is too general and misses out on the nuts and bolts of what we are after...
...The Congress Party leaders' view betrays an overly rationalist approach that failed utterly to comprehend the depth, complexity, and intensity of emotions unleashed by escalating uncertainty...
...Even the steps actually taken on the ground seemed ineffective...
...Therefore, the responsibility of the British government to avert violence was far greater...
...they were essentially dependent on the strength of the newly constituted Boundary Force, which was ill-equipped both in terms of manpower and resources . Overall, it is fair to conclude that the British administration did not plan for a breakdown of civil authority...
...There appears to have been a huge gap between British rhetoric and the effective steps that were actually taken . This was evident in Mountbatteds dealing with the situation in Punjab...
...Those gripped by anger and revenge turned to arson and brutal murder...
...This is not a complete explanation, but at least it nudges us in the right direction . However, crucial questions remain unanswered...
...This tacit support for a new state served another purpose...
...Even so, one crucial difference remains...
...Here, I focus on these questions and limit myself to the period immediately prior to independence...
...Gandhi's distaste for power continuously and uninterruptedly made him morally sensitive...
...There is love, and attachment, for the city or village in which one has grown upagain, not translatable into security of livelihood and property...
...E .M Jenkins's (Punjab) letter to Rear Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma on 9 April 1947, TOP, VoIX ; Jenkíns to Abell, 17 March 1947, TOP, Vol...
...How could Congress afford to appear to lose nerve precisely when nerve was most required...
...To suggest that the British weren't able to foresee the impending violence is to exonerate them, 42 . DISSENT I Winter 2009 when a large body of written exchanges among British officials suggests the opposite . Of course, the moral responsibility for anticipating large-scale destruction and displacement lay both with the government and with Indian leaders...
...The process of cementing a "two-state" solution to "the Hindu-Muslim problem" partially determined the timing of withdrawal, but several other factors contributed toward it...
...And finally, what lessons can be learned from the calamity that followed, during which an estimated one million people died and millions more were displaced...
...How on earth could a simple announcement avert violence...
...Paper IMN, TOP, Vol...
...What was urgently needed here was not a view from nowhere a reasonable, statist viewpoint-but an insider's perspective, which might have made it possible to foresee the brewing storm that would soon wreak destruction on a monumental scale . H ow COULD anyone have falled to predict this outcome...
...Insisting that the situation was under its control was not just an external imperative but a crucial internal requirement . The more pushed to the wall it was, the more loudly its leaders had to say that things were or could be brought under control without any external help...
...But what of the Indian leadership...
...491-520 DISSENTI Winter2009.43...
...While the assurances from Mountbatten would suggest that the British were in a position to handle any situation, the reality was far from so...
...All it has to do is to withdraw and leave India, if possible, carrying on in an orderly manner, but withdraw in any case on or before the promised date, maybe even in chaos ." Gandhi continued to believe that a joint statement from the Congress and the Muslim League would halt the violence...
...Rajeev Bhargava: India ScHOLARLY WRITING explains British withdrawal from India in terms of a crisis of the colonial state precipitated by Britain's expansive involvement in the Second World War and the sustained anticolonial struggle of Indians led by leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru...
...The Indian leadership had neither the resources nor the requisite experience to handle it . True, Congress leaders knew of the existence of private armies of political parties, hell-bent on creating unrest through planned and systematic onslaught...
...Let me at the outset state two truisms : First, no imperial power has been known to withdraw from a colony without securing its strategic interests...
...Imperial self-esteem depended on the belief that the jewel was still somewhere in the crown...
...Handling public power is difficult at the best of times...
...Perhaps the most important reason for the hasty transfer of power and for the relative insensitivity to its outcome was a substantive change in the structure of power within the Congress Party that brought Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel center stage and severely marginalized Gandhi...
...This mistrust in the ability of the British to handle the situation was not ill-founded considering the previous experience of riot management in Calcutta and Bihar...
...They could only get off our backs...
...Perhaps another important cause of the timing of withdrawal was that once the decision to have two independent nation-states was announced, the overall conditions in the entire region began to deteriorate rapidly...
...A definítive announcement by the government and the leaders of the Congress Party would set minds at rest, and violence would automatically abate . This proved to be wishful thinking at its worst...
...A divided, somewhat weaker subcontinent, with a potentially malleable Pakistan, helped sustain that belief...
...Finally, we must question whether the decisions of imperial powers on withdrawal can ever be based not just on specific strategic and political interests but also on a sense of moral responsibility for their (former) colony...
...It alone had the power to take preventive measures . F THE BRITISH had a sense of the coming violence, what preventive steps were taken, and were those steps enough to put down the violence...
...One needs to show a tremendous belief in oneself and do so despite (or precisely because of) the uncertainty and lack of assurance from which one might also suffer...
...In a state carved out along ethno-religious lines from a country where Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs had lived cheek by jowl for centuries, how could freshly invented minorities live without fear amid newly created majorities...
...And, finally, there is resentment at the unfairness of being forced out of a place where one has lived for as long as anyone can remember and being cut off from one's ancestors-for some, a violation of what is most sacred...
...What made Congress Party leaders accept the timing and the potentially costly and immoral outcome of the British withdrawal...
...IX, p. 961-962...
...However, everyone agrees that nobody anticipated the exodus of population-a massive cognitive failure . The British were unable to analyze the dimensions of the problem . It is true that many people, including Jinnah, imagined that only a minimal transfer of population was in the offing...
...Some writers suggest that Mountbatten did not have adequate intelligence reports of the scale and intensity of the violence . Others insist that he possessed requisite information to take preemptive action...
...This triggered fresh rounds of violence when people realized that the only way to ensure separate living was physically to remove the "other" from the neighborhood, even by eliminating him . More compassionate neighbors pleaded with friends to leave...
...While the Labour government under Clement Attlee was gearing up for withdrawal and justifying its action as the only way of arriving at a workable solution, other voices within Britain and inside the British Parliament warned of the grave consequences of withdrawing much before the deadline of June 1948 . Whatever his motivation, Churchill warned that an immediate withdrawal from the subcontinent would leave behind a legacy of war and devastation...
...All were unwitting cogs in a political machinery of violence...
Vol. 56 • January 2009 • No. 1
