Laura’s Reviews > Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India > Status Update

Jinnah and Gandhi both thought Mountbattens plan was too fast and it would be chaos if the punjab and bengal were partitioned! He kept going with HMG full support except for Churchill after WWII Grest Britain cared little about India anymore and wanted out quickly!

Mountbatten made up his mind quickly that the Partition of India was the only way to quickly end the Raj. Gandhi pleaded with him to slow down and “that it would be a blunder…for the British to be a party in anyway … to the division of India.” Mountbatten ignored him.

Mountbatten was charmed by Nehru and considered only his point of view he knew very little about Indian politics. He considered Jinnah “mediocre” and Gandhi a “treacherous old fool.”

Gandhi told Mountbattennto offer the formation of the central government to Jinnah, which Mountbatten agreed was the best way to prevent bloodshed. However, he kept it secret and never told Jinnah about Gandhi’s plan!

Lord Mountbatten, a close member of the King, Churchill and all the good old boys of Britain was appointed to lead the exit of the Raj and usher in a peaceful and prosperous coalition government. The date set was June, 1948, but Mountbatten was in a big hurry to get back to his naval career, so he planned a much quicker exit!

The hope for a coalition interim government was dead

Neither the military nor the British administrative machine coul turn back to a time of firm British rule in 1946. The challenge now was to evacuate the 96,000 Brits as quickly as possible and make it look like a glorious liberation rather than a “shameful flight.”

“It is a tragic ending of our rule in India,” Commander of British forces Wavell noted. He meant the Muslim “action now” and massive Hindu retaliation in Bengal and Bihar. It is a little like the Israeli response to the Hamas attack. There were over 10,000 dead and 120,000 Muslim refugees. Jinnah felt only a separate state of Pakistan was the answer now. Would this have happened if the Raj had never happened?