Indian Summer

Title: Indian Summer – The Secret History of the End of an Empire

Author: Alex von Tunzelmann

Publisher: Pocket Books, 2007 (First)

ISBN: 9781416522256

Pages: 464

On August 15, 1947, a bright new chapter opened in Indian history. After nearly a millennium of continual warfare and subjugation, the Indian spirit broke free and the nation finally awoke to freedom. This outstanding feat was achieved by ousting the British Empire, on which the sun never set. The astonishing feature of India’s freedom struggle was that it was more or less peaceful. This is hardly surprising, as the intelligentsia which led the revolt was born and brought up in a political and intellectual climate fostered by the British themselves. After the Second World War, when it became painfully evident that India can’t be ruled with the meager resources at Britain’s disposal, Clement Attlee and his Labour government decided to give away the jewel in the Empire’s crown – India – to its rightful owners. Lord Mountbatten, nicknamed Dickie, who was the supreme commander in South East Asia during the War, was assigned the onerous task of dividing the country on religious lines and transferring power to local leaders. His task was further complicated by the intricacies of India’s religious landscape and the subcontinent’s theocratic prejudices. His years in India were further brought into focus by the alleged love affair between Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, and Edwina, his wife. The essence of the book is the events played out in the fifteen months from March 1947, when the couple set foot in India as the Viceroy and Vicereine, and June 1948, when power was handed over and they returned home jobless. This core narrative is preceded by a long buildup of incidents that led to 1947, and succeeded by descriptions of the main actors’ lives thereafter till their death. Alex von Tunzelmann is a historian and author, and this is her first book. The funniest part of it all was that I had taken the author to be a male from the name and only learned the true fact much later. This required some last minute changes in the review!

Part 1 of the book sets the stage for opening the final act in India’s independence, with the Mountbattens’ leaving England in style. In this section that spans more than a third of the book, the social and private lives of the main characters are analyzed in nitpicking detail – especially when it tends to be controversial. The author puts Louis and Edwina Mountbatten, Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi under the scanner. Of these, the Father of the Nation gets the most reprobation. Gandhi’s political life was an extension of his personal one, or rather; they melded seamlessly so that no one could say for sure where one ended or where the other began. The tactics employed by him in the struggle for freedom from the British included civil disobedience, passive resistance, logical argument, nonviolence in the face of violence and emotional blackmail. Gandhi has admitted that he learned these traits from his wife Kasturba, in her deft dealing with Gandhi’s mother and her own mother-in-law. Gandhi’s handling of his sons left much to be desired in discharging parental duty. His experiments in testing sexual abstinence with his female acolytes were notorious. Tunzelmann tells of an incident in which a police team that searched the ashram in the middle of the night found Gandhi in the company of an eighteen-year old girl. This incident was soon hushed up. His impractical proposals on how the newly independent India should be moulded provoked cries of reprehension from all concerned parties. The author has painted most of her major actors in a not so flattering light. Royalty and their associates like Mountbatten get a severe drubbing. Lackluster performance in education and naval service had made Mountbatten a pampered, but inefficient commander. Even the Prince of Wales is not spared the author’s sharp rebuke though the author had acknowledged with thanks the permission granted by the Queen to access the Royal Archives at Windsor.

Tunzelmann trounces two arguments commonly used by nationalist elements in Indian society, that the presence of Gandhi reined in communalist elements in Indian politics and that Britain left India with extreme reluctance and immense pressure from Congress’ struggles. The author asserts that while Jinnah’s ascendancy coincided with the rise of political Islam, Gandhi’s spiritually inspired programmes gave confidence to religious chauvinists to take part openly in Congress politics. Fundamentalist Hindus were a rare presence before the coming of Gandhi on the scene. However, this argument contradicts with another of the author that Gandhi reached the zenith of his career during the Salt Satyagraha in 1930 and thereafter entered a descent to near irrelevance by 1947. His fanciful proposals first on how to avoid partition of the country and then on how to do it were rejected out of hand by the Congress, who were becoming more and more embarrassed by the Mahatma’s utterances. Gandhi rose to prominence again only in August 1947, when his moral authority could prevent communal violence breaking out in Calcutta by staging a fast unto death. While thousands of armed soldiers miserably failed to curb the fratricidal bloodbath in partitioned Punjab, a weak and unarmed man could ensure calmness in partitioned Bengal was nothing short of a miracle. A few months later, he did it again in Delhi, where the communal frenzy abated by his presence and another fast. Gandhi’s fast would force the Indian government’s hand to release payments due for Pakistan on account of partition of assets, but kept frozen on account of its support to assailants in Kashmir. These two incidents catapulted the Mahatma to the most ‘powerful’ position in India, though the irony of the word as applied to the prophet of nonviolence is glaring. Besides, he was gunned by a fundamentalist Hindu. So what is the logic in correlating Gandhi’s career with communalization of politics?

The book presents the grievous atmosphere in UK after the Second World War. Pyrrhic victory is only a mild term for the tremendous cost it had to pay in terms of human lives and material to crush the Axis powers into a pit even more terrible than they found themselves in. Isn’t it sheer madness for two prosperous nations to pick a quarrel up between them, then try to sort it out using violence on a scale not witnessed heretofore, and then ending up as paupers solely dependent on the handouts from a third power, the USA, in this instance? Devoid of resources and power, Britain was anxious to leave India for good. Tunzelmann writes that hundreds of thousands were dead, millions expended, normal industries battered, towns destroyed, families broken up and stuck back together and food supplies restricted to the minimum with strict rationing in England. This contrasts markedly with the boastful claims of a few overly patriotic fellow Indians that we had kicked the British out!

Though the book is fundamentally about the indefinable relationship between Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten, it effectively answers the question whether retaining Mountbatten as the Governor General of free India was a wise decision for the new nation to take. It is heartless and unfounded on facts to argue that he was appointed on the express desire of Nehru on account of the illicit relationship India’s first prime minister was running with the governor general’s wife! The book mentions a decisive episode in the finalization of the Punjab boundary. Gurdaspur district had a Muslim majority, but if it was to be given to Pakistan, Amritsar would’ve been mostly surrounded by Pakistani territory and India’s only route to Kashmir would’ve been cut off. Even though Cyril Radcliffe took a decision based only on population, it was said to be amended under pressure from Mountbatten. Eventually, Gurdaspur stayed a part of India, thereby facilitating quick movement of troops and material to Kashmir, when insurgents swooped on it two months later. Indians should not lose sight of this great service. Besides, Edwina made a commendable effort to mobilizing material for refugee camps and to make its administration more efficient and refugee-friendly, on account of her close relationship with the nation’s prime minister. It is curious to note that the ends of the four major figures shared something in common. Gandhi was assassinated, Nehru and Edwina died of heart attacks and Mountbatten was killed in an IRA terrorist attack that detonated a bomb in the boat he was sailing in.

On the whole, the book is rather gossipy in style. Of course, the facts are there in full, and the author had done extensive research to compile the diverse material into an immensely readable homogeneity; yet, she has not omitted anything which one would utter only in a hushed tone in respectable company. If it can be said without prejudice or sexist bias, the book looks a bit too feminine to general readers! It is, however, very pleasing to read. There is a lengthy section of Notes and a commendable Index. A set of monochrome plates adds variety to the narrative.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star