- 5 months ago
A special edition of Booked with Gaurav Sawant features author Sam Dalrymple discussing his book Shattered Lands: Five Partitions in the Making of Modern South Asia
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00:00What the Raj actually was 100 years ago, and the fact that it stretched all the way as far as Aden in what's now southern Yemen, and Yemen certainly never features in our history textbooks, I think that the relationship between Edwina and Nehru much has been written on it, and there's all sorts of theories, maybe they had a relationship, is that they were close enough to make Jinnah at the time so suspicious that he refused to let Mountbatten stay on as governor-general of
00:29Pakistan after independence.
00:37Hello and welcome to a special edition of Booked, I'm Gaurav Savant.
00:43100 years ago, from the Red Sea to the jungles of Burma, now Myanmar, through Yemen, through Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and across undivided India, through Burma, people used the Indian rupee to trade,
00:59and of course the passports were stamped, the Indian empire.
01:0350 years ago, that empire began to come apart at the seams.
01:09Five partitions tore the empire apart.
01:12Shattered land explores those five partitions from 1930s to 1971, that actually gave birth to 12 nations.
01:21From Yemen to UAE to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, shattered land.
01:27Five partitions in the making of a modern South Asia by Sam Dalrymple, has spellbinding stories of how the British Raj, where once upon a time they said that the sun never sets in the Raj.
01:40The same British couldn't wait to leave India as fast as possible.
01:46And even after they left, their legacy includes several festering wounds.
01:52Sam Dalrymple is a Delhi-based Scottish historian and an award-winning filmmaker.
01:57He graduated from Yorksford University, Persian and Sanskrit language scholar.
02:02He's also studied at the University of Ishfahan.
02:05He's worked across South and Central Asia.
02:07And he joins me on this special broadcast.
02:10Sam, welcome.
02:12Thank you for having me.
02:13It's lovely to be here.
02:15Sam, fascinating account of the Raj, and especially the Raj coming apart brick by brick.
02:21India, as you mentioned, was the jewel in the crown, and the Raj that stretched from the Red Sea to the Bay of Bengal and beyond to Burma.
02:30I want to understand from you what brought about this book.
02:33What were your thoughts that you thought of piecing together?
02:35Because we know of India, Pakistan, and then India, Bangladesh, but not all the way from the Red Sea to the Bay of Bengal and beyond.
02:44So the book began when I was speaking to a man from Tripura.
02:48And I was asking about partition.
02:50I was working on partition testimonies at the time for the 75th anniversary in 2022.
02:55And when I asked about partition and how it affected his hometown, he said, which partition?
03:01Was I talking about the separation from Burma in 1937?
03:05Was I talking about the great partition of 1947?
03:08Was I talking about 1971 and, you know, Bangladesh's partition from Pakistan?
03:16Pakistan. And that got me thinking, because Burma very rarely features in our image of South Asia and the Raj.
03:27And then I began to look at what the Raj actually was 100 years ago, and the fact that it stretched all the way as far as Aden in what's now southern Yemen.
03:36And Yemen certainly never features in, you know, our history textbooks that I read growing up in Delhi.
03:43And yet, you know, everyone from Dhirubayam Bani was living there back in the 1950s.
03:50And it was once an integral part of India, so much so that a Yemeni Jewish woman trying to migrate to Jerusalem after the Balfour Declaration declares Palestine a homeland for the Jews,
04:03she has to migrate on an Indian passport because by virtue of living in Yemen, she is Indian.
04:10And this is a story that we've entirely forgotten.
04:12The scale of the Raj is something that we've forgotten.
04:14And the fact that Dubai could have almost become part of modern India is a story that we've entirely forgotten.
04:21True. And the partition of India and the carving of a Muslim-majority Pakistan.
04:27Now, that's been a subject that's been written about pretty extensively.
04:30However, your book traces the inspiration for Pakistan to events a decade earlier in Burma.
04:38Yes. So, Burma was the first partition.
04:42Burma was India's richest province for over 100 years.
04:51And it was also, it was the wealthiest province.
04:55And yet, immigration from the rest of the Raj led to increasingly Burmese people being pushed out of jobs,
05:02being pushed out of their homes because they couldn't afford rent.
05:05And the newspapers from 1920s and 30s Burma feel oddly reminiscent of, you know, British debates about Brexit.
05:16Should we remain as part of this union and should we not?
05:18And eventually, on April Fool's Day 1937, they separate.
05:22And this is the first time that a province has persuaded the government that it has its own separate identity
05:30and should thus be separated and made into a separate British colony.
05:33And within a few weeks of that happening, you get the first use of the term Pakistan by Ramath Ali Chowdhury,
05:42who comes up with the name.
05:44And he explicitly justifies the creation of Pakistan on the basis that Burma was allowed to separate.
05:51Why can't we?
05:52And India, you know, as we continue to grapple with the problems that emerged then and today,
06:00the problem of Pakistan state-sponsored terror, as we did with raiders in 1947,
06:07why did the liberation of Goa spook Pakistan, spook Field Marshal Ayub Khan?
06:13So, this is one of the things that I found fascinating, is that throughout the 1950s,
06:19after the first war over Kashmir, India and Pakistan actually get on quite well.
06:24They manage to put the past behind them.
06:26And, you know, to the extent that we've completely forgotten, they share intelligence.
06:31India and Pakistan are sharing intelligence to stop communist revolutions during the Cold War.
06:35They're signing treaties.
06:38And the turning point actually seems to be around the time of India's liberation of Goa.
06:45Ayub Khan becomes convinced that India has got a new expansionist mindset
06:50and that it's now taking bits that it historically considers part of India
06:56and that if Goa is first, Pakistan will be next.
06:58And it's in the wake of that, that you've got the first Pakistani sponsorship since 1947.
07:06You've got the first Pakistani sponsorship of militias in India.
07:11Specifically, he begins funding the Nagas and the Mizos in northeast India.
07:15And within two months of that, Raw in India finds out
07:19and begins sponsoring Pashtun and Bengali separatists in Pakistan.
07:24And the proxy war that is continuing to this day actually begins then.
07:29And I think we didn't truly realize this until recently a series of former intelligence files were declassified.
07:36And there's a brilliant scholar called Avinash Baliwal who got to look at these in the National Archives in Delhi.
07:42And, you know, the whole story was laid out.
07:44And it was a kind of Cold War thriller that no one's ever been able to look at before.
07:48And did Pakistan also have these archives?
07:52Did Pakistan chronicle it?
07:53Or, you know, they were very desperate.
07:56If we were to talk about what was happening in then East Pakistan,
08:00of course, we'll come to that subsequently.
08:01Did they burn all those documents?
08:04Or is Pakistan funding or then East Pakistan funding
08:07of fueling the insurgency in India's northeast,
08:11is that well documented even in Pakistan?
08:14So it is.
08:15In 1971, during the War for Bangladeshi Liberation,
08:22almost all of the documents kept in Taka were burnt.
08:26But, however, most of the documents that are sitting in Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi
08:31are still there and are still accessible to scholars.
08:35There's a brilliant scholar, for example, called Yakub Bangash,
08:39who has done amazing work using the archives there.
08:42But it's much harder for non-Pakistanis to access those archives.
08:48So scholars like me, whilst I was able to access all the archives in India
08:52and several of the other countries in the book,
08:54for example, Qatar, I was able to get into some personal archives in Pakistan.
08:59I was not able to get into a lot of the state archives
09:02and look at declassified intelligence, etc.
09:04because they have very, very strict rules on what you can access as a scholar.
09:09You know, in this conversation, let's go back and forth a little.
09:12I did, you know, jump to the liberation of Goa
09:16and Pakistan fueling insurgency in the northeast.
09:18I want to come back to just before independence.
09:23You know, Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India,
09:28you've written, and of course it's been chronicled,
09:30he was reluctant to come to India
09:32and you've written that he feared, he feared
09:35that they'd return to Britain with bullets in their back.
09:40Explain this, sir.
09:42So by 1946, when he's kind of first approached to become the last viceroy,
09:49the Quit India movement has just happened.
09:53You know, one of the largest movements against British imperialism
09:57in Indian history.
09:59And I think at the time, many Brits assumed that it was going to be,
10:05you know, like 1857 all over again,
10:08that you were going to get Indians start kind of attacking Brits in their beds
10:12and all this kind of thing.
10:13Of course, that's not what happens.
10:14And thanks to Mountbatten's rushed through partition,
10:17Indians actually turn on Indians
10:19and you get some of the worst pogroms in world history.
10:24In the, you know, 12 million people forced to migrate from their homes,
10:28the largest forced migration of human history,
10:30and between one and two million people die in the partition pogroms.
10:33And yet virtually not a single Brit is killed in these pogroms.
10:38But when he goes out, that's not yet,
10:40it's not yet clear that that's the case.
10:42And there's still a lot more antipathy towards Brits
10:45than there are between Hindus and Muslims.
10:47It's when he first is approached to go out.
10:51You know, you've mentioned at length,
10:54what was the thinking of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru,
10:57of Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
10:59I want to for a moment talk about Sardar Vallabhai Patel.
11:03And the Ironman of India did not think very highly of Lord Mountbatten.
11:08You've written that he thought of Lord Mountbatten more as a toy for Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to play with.
11:16But it was actually Lady Mountbatten.
11:18And that's again something that you've written about in different places, in bits and pieces,
11:24about her relationship with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru that made headlines not just then.
11:30It made headlines even then, but continued to make headlines over decades.
11:34And perhaps made Jinnah that time very suspicious of Lord Mountbatten's actions.
11:40Precisely.
11:42I think that the relationship between Edwina and Nehru,
11:46much has been written on it.
11:48And there's all sorts of theories.
11:50Maybe they had a relationship.
11:51It's unclear precisely what happened.
11:54But what we do know for certain
11:55is that they were close enough
11:58to make Jinnah at the time
12:00so suspicious
12:01that he refused to let Mountbatten stay on
12:04as Governor General of Pakistan
12:05after independence.
12:07So after independence, Mountbatten stays on
12:09in India as Governor General
12:10for a few more months.
12:12But he does not stay on in Pakistan.
12:14And so when that first war in Kashmir breaks out,
12:17there is no joint Governor General
12:19to oversee the whole thing.
12:21And that is partly
12:22a result of
12:25Jinnah's suspicions
12:26about Nehru and Edwina's relationship.
12:29What happened between them?
12:31We don't know because no one ever wrote it down.
12:34There are still, you know,
12:35files that are closed to us
12:37in Southampton University
12:38has all of their private letters,
12:40but they're not open to the public still.
12:42Some letters you've mentioned,
12:44you know, the way they'd sign off those letters
12:48and what they'd write
12:50in some of those letters
12:51you've mentioned in the book.
12:53And what was the appreciation of those,
12:55including in the Muslim League that time,
12:57about their relationship or friendship?
13:00You've written words to the effect
13:02that even that time,
13:03people were talking about this relationship
13:06within 10 days
13:07of Edwina Mountbatten
13:10and Lord Mountbatten being in India.
13:11Yeah, and I think that it,
13:15within just a few days,
13:17there's all sorts of people
13:18from, you know,
13:19the head of the army's ADC,
13:22for example,
13:23writing in his diary
13:24that their relationship
13:26is raising eyebrows.
13:29Now, a lot of the writing
13:32that is subsequently written
13:33about their relationship
13:34does come from,
13:35you know,
13:36major political figures
13:38within Pakistan.
13:40And so it's unclear
13:40how much we can trust those sources
13:42given that they are,
13:44they have a bias towards,
13:45you know,
13:45presenting narrow in a different way.
13:48But what is the case,
13:49without a doubt,
13:50is that they were very,
13:51very close
13:52and so close
13:53that Jinnah was convinced
13:55that he could not trust
13:56the Mountbatten's anymore.
13:59And the Lord,
14:00and Lord Mountbatten
14:01was also,
14:02if I may,
14:03apprehensive
14:05about Sardar Patel.
14:07You know,
14:08at one place you've mentioned
14:09and I don't want to give out a lot
14:11because people would be
14:11very interested in reading this,
14:13when Sardar Patel suggested
14:15using the army
14:17to deal with the Muslim League
14:19or as you say,
14:20to get rid
14:21of the Muslim League,
14:22Sardar Patel
14:23even replaced the head
14:25of India's Intelligence Bureau
14:27and no longer a British man
14:29whose loyalties he suspected.
14:31So what was happening
14:33between Lord Mountbatten
14:34and Sardar Wallabhai Patel?
14:36So this is one of the most
14:38extraordinary bits
14:40of the independence saga
14:42that I think no one really knows.
14:45And it only came out
14:45about 10 years ago
14:46because it was kept hushed
14:48by both governments,
14:49India and Britain.
14:50But from the...
14:54From about August 1946,
14:58Patel, as the home minister
15:02of the, you know,
15:05government of India to be,
15:09had complete control
15:10over the intelligence services.
15:13And when Mountbatten arrives
15:14as viceroy,
15:16Patel has so much power
15:17that he is able to control
15:18which intelligence
15:20from the Intelligence Bureau
15:22Mountbatten is able to read.
15:25And so Mountbatten
15:26is constantly suspicious
15:28that he's not being told
15:29the full story
15:29and that Patel knows things
15:31that he's not telling him.
15:32And there's this...
15:33There's far more power,
15:35I think,
15:35in the hands of Sardar Patel
15:38than we tend to assume.
15:39And I think that new research
15:42is constantly coming out
15:44about how much
15:45of an important
15:46behind-the-scenes role
15:49that Patel played
15:51throughout
15:52the final months
15:54of British rule
15:56because he had
15:57quite a lot of power.
15:59Yes.
16:00Yes.
16:01You know,
16:01it's a fascinating story
16:02that I've heard
16:03from Field Marshal
16:04Sam Manikshaw
16:04about sending in the army
16:07the signing of
16:09Instrument of Accession.
16:10He's telling
16:10Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru,
16:12Jawahar,
16:13you want Kashmir or not?
16:14And the moment
16:15Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru says,
16:17of course I want Kashmir,
16:18he turns around
16:19and tells Sam Manikshaw,
16:20there you've got your orders.
16:21No,
16:21now go to Kashmir.
16:22That led to another controversy,
16:24didn't it,
16:24that you mentioned
16:25in your book?
16:26So there is a controversy
16:29that has long reigned
16:31over whether
16:32Indian troops
16:34arrived in Kashmir
16:36before or after
16:38the signing of Kashmir's
16:39accession to India.
16:40So when the Maharaja of Kashmir
16:42signs the accession
16:43and it's delivered to Nehru,
16:44did the first Indian troops
16:46land in Srinagar
16:47before or after the fact?
16:49And Pakistan obviously
16:50uses this
16:52to, you know,
16:55back up its claims
16:56to Kashmir
16:56and says that India
16:57sending in troops
16:58was illegal.
16:58I don't think it's,
16:59you can go quite that far
17:01because of course
17:02the accession was signed
17:03by the Maharaja
17:04no matter what you say
17:05and it was on its way.
17:07But there is,
17:08but there remains
17:09all sorts
17:10of
17:11bits
17:13of the whole saga
17:14that remain unclear
17:15in terms of timelines.
17:16There's a lot of scholars
17:17who've gone into
17:18precisely the order of events.
17:20But I think,
17:21you know,
17:21But by then,
17:23but by then
17:24the Pakistanis,
17:25their raiders
17:26and army
17:26had already
17:27invaded Kashmir
17:28several days
17:30before,
17:3122nd is the official day.
17:32But even before that,
17:34and this is something
17:34which is equally fascinating,
17:36Sam,
17:37you know,
17:37where you've mentioned
17:39that the Pakistanis
17:41wanted to create
17:43unrest
17:43and send in the army
17:44within weeks
17:46of independence
17:47in September
17:48itself.
17:49and the person
17:50they tied up with
17:51actually wanted
17:53to get married
17:54and went on a honeymoon
17:55and that is where
17:56the Pakistanis
17:57could not invade
17:58Kashmir in time,
17:59isn't it?
18:00Jammu and Kashmir
18:01in Kunch.
18:01It's extraordinary.
18:03Extraordinary.
18:03It's extraordinary
18:04just how early
18:05they're doing it.
18:06But the crucial thing,
18:06I think,
18:07is the fact that
18:07this is all happening
18:08behind the back
18:10of Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
18:11This is the first time
18:12that members
18:13of the Pakistani army
18:15are going behind
18:16the back
18:16of their civilian government
18:18and beginning
18:19to fund proxy agents
18:21to enter Kashmir
18:22on their behalf.
18:23You know,
18:24it's a process
18:26that we've seen
18:26so many times
18:27since 1947.
18:29Members of the army
18:30going beyond
18:31their jurisdiction
18:32in Pakistan.
18:34And this is the very
18:34first time
18:35that it happens.
18:36Jinnah,
18:37I think,
18:37for the first
18:37almost three months
18:39has no idea
18:40what's happening.
18:41It's only three months
18:42in that he finally
18:43learns what members
18:45of his army
18:46have been doing.
18:47Well,
18:48members of the
18:48British Indian army
18:49were already playing
18:51games in Gilgit.
18:52you've written about
18:53how a certain
18:54British army major
18:55got drunk
18:56a couple of bottles
18:57of gin
18:58and they planned,
18:59you know,
19:00they arrested
19:01the Maharaja's
19:02army officer there,
19:04Colonel Gansara Singh,
19:05if I remember
19:05the name correctly,
19:06was taken into custody
19:09and they unfurled
19:10the Pakistani flag there.
19:13It just goes on
19:15to show
19:15that officers
19:17of the British Indian army
19:18were also involved
19:19in helping Pakistan
19:21or at least
19:22that is the belief.
19:24But I also want
19:24to ask you
19:24another question.
19:25Muhammad Ali Jinnah
19:26kept complaining
19:27that he got
19:28a moth-eaten Pakistan
19:29but his own
19:30daughter Dina
19:31refused to
19:32migrate to Pakistan.
19:34Why was that?
19:36So,
19:37Dina,
19:38like Jinnah
19:39himself,
19:40had married
19:41a Parsi
19:42and she
19:44had settled
19:44down in Bombay.
19:45She'd married
19:46into the Wadia family
19:47that continues
19:48to be one
19:49of the richest
19:50families in Bombay
19:51today
19:51and she
19:54didn't want
19:54to move
19:55to this
19:56new
19:56strange land.
19:58I think
19:58at the time
19:59of partition
20:00no one knew
20:01how lasting
20:02and,
20:03you know,
20:04this border
20:05would be.
20:05Jinnah himself
20:06kept his house
20:07in Bombay
20:08because he thought
20:09he'd be able
20:09to cross over
20:10back and forth.
20:12Nehru,
20:13in the early days
20:13after partition,
20:14was writing
20:15about looking
20:15forward to
20:16visiting the
20:17northwest frontier
20:18again very soon,
20:19you know,
20:19once things
20:20calmed down.
20:21And so,
20:21I think
20:21quite a lot
20:22of people
20:23assumed that
20:24the border
20:24would not
20:25become as hard
20:26and as
20:27impossible
20:28as it would
20:28later become.
20:31And of course,
20:32then there's also
20:32the aspect about,
20:34okay,
20:35I'm going to come
20:35back to a lot
20:36of those points
20:37later.
20:38There's so much
20:39about the 1971
20:40war,
20:41the last partition
20:42that you write
20:42about,
20:43and how
20:44India helped
20:46Mukti Bahini
20:48in those areas.
20:50You've written
20:50about how
20:51the,
20:52and I want you
20:53to just shed
20:53light on this.
20:55Pakistan didn't
20:56want to surrender.
20:57They were seeking
20:58a ceasefire,
20:59but it was
20:59General Jacob
21:00who almost
21:01went and put
21:02enough pressure
21:03before the
21:04US 7th Fleet
21:05could come into
21:06the Indian Ocean
21:07or the Bay of Bengal
21:08to force
21:09General A.A.K.
21:11Niazi
21:11to sign
21:12the instrument
21:13of surrender.
21:13It's one
21:16of the great,
21:17most extraordinary
21:17stories in
21:19South Asian
21:19history and
21:20one that still
21:21isn't fully
21:22understood.
21:23I mean,
21:23you know,
21:24it's the South
21:24Asian equivalent
21:25of the Cuban
21:26missile crisis.
21:27In December
21:281971,
21:30the US
21:31on the side
21:32of Pakistan
21:32sends in
21:33its nuclear
21:34fleet into
21:35the Bay of
21:35Bengal to
21:36pressure India
21:37into surrendering.
21:38in response
21:40to the USSR
21:41that has been
21:41getting closer
21:42to Mrs.
21:42Gandhi
21:43and to
21:43India
21:44sends in
21:45its nuclear
21:46submarines
21:46into the
21:47Bay of Bengal
21:47and there
21:48is a moment
21:49of Cold War
21:49nuclear
21:50brinkmanship.
21:51And it's at
21:51this point
21:52that General
21:52Jacob flies
21:54in to try
21:56and press
21:57Niazi
21:58for a full
22:01surrender.
22:02And there's
22:02a wonderful
22:03photograph that
22:04survives.
22:05I think the
22:06correspondent for
22:08the Observer
22:09newspaper gets
22:11stuck in the
22:11room with them
22:12and ends up
22:12eating a
22:13chicken lunch
22:13with them
22:14together.
22:15Lemon chicken
22:16and bananas
22:17if I remember
22:17correctly.
22:18Chicken legs
22:18and bananas.
22:19It's a
22:20fascinating book.
22:21There's a lot
22:22about Hyderabad
22:22that I want to
22:23talk to you
22:23about but
22:24perhaps we'll
22:24have to leave
22:25that for
22:25another day.
22:26Sam Dalrymple,
22:28you know,
22:29lovely talking
22:30to you and I
22:30hope we carry
22:31on this
22:31conversation even
22:33further in the
22:33days and weeks
22:34ahead and wish
22:35you all the
22:35best with your
22:36book.
22:37Thank you so
22:37much.
22:38It was a
22:38pleasure to be
22:38here.
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