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armies since he had been commander-in-chief during the ill-fated defence of Burma in 1941. On New Year’s Eve 1946 he had confided to his journal: ‘It is a great strain on a small man to do a job which is too big for him, if he feels it is too big. Health and vitality suffer.’2 He wrote to Pethick-Lawrence in early March, regretting that he was leaving India ‘with the work unfinished, but if HMG feel that a younger man and a fresher mind can do it better, that is for them to decide’. The Indians would probably pull through, he thought, but ‘it is force of character that is so often lacking. Perhaps they will develop it when we leave.’3 Privately, he wrote: ‘I’m glad that I have finished with politics.’4 Most British soldiers and civil servants in India felt he had been shabbily treated, but then political hatred of the Labour government was very widespread among the remnants of the Raj’s service class.

Wavell’s martial paternalism and decency gave way to Mount-batten’s breezy realism on 24 March. Almost straightaway a compromise was struck on the INA issue. Nehru agreed that the government would reject the demand in the legislative assembly for the release and remuneration of all the remaining ‘black’ prisoners, while Auchinleck agreed to allow judges of the federal court to review the evidence with a view to commuting or reducing the sentences.5 The compromise meant that Mountbatten did not need to use his viceregal veto to overrule the Congress-dominated government, a proceeding that Nehru had feared would cause demonstrations across the country. In return, Nehru backed Auchinleck in the assembly, a ‘courageous and statesmanlike’ gesture according to Mountbatten, who made little secret of his admiration and liking for the Congress leader. But the compromise went only so far. Even as independence approached in August, there was contention over eleven INA men still in jail. The Congress wanted them out before the magic date, 15 August. Auchinleck argued that this would offend the British officers who were to continue to serve in the Indian Army at least until the following spring. The solution seemed to be an amnesty, but the British would agree to this only on condition that the detainees would not be mobbed by jubilant crowds on their release.6

As the hot weather of 1947 set in – the last year, as it was to prove, of two centuries of British rule – a change came over the mood of the people and the politicians. Everyone seemed to adopt a more intransigent position. There was between the Congress and the Muslim League an impasse so unbreakable that by late April Mount-batten had decided that a partition of India and its Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab in the west and Bengal in the east was the only solution. Faced with troubles around the world, the Attlee government and Mountbatten decided to pull out of India as quickly as possible. Employing a mixed metaphor of woeful banality, Attlee told Mount-batten: ‘I am very conscious that I put you in to bat on a very sticky wicket to pull the game out of the fire.’7 With almost indecent haste, Attlee’s government pushed legislation through the British Parliament to create two new dominions within the Commonwealth on 15 August 1947. Freedom would be granted separately to Pakistan and Hindustan-India. By 17 July secretariats for the two countries were up and running. While Hindu–Muslim conflicts increased in number all across the vast country, a myriad of apparently trivial but highly symbolic issues absorbed the time of the political leaders. The British, for instance, wanted to signal that it was dominion status within the British Commonwealth that was being conceded. They asked that a small Union Flag should be incorporated into the flags of the two countries. The Indians refused outright. Jinnah professed himself pained to have to reject the request, but reported that it would be ‘repugnant to the religious feeling of the Muslims’ to have a cross of St George juxtaposed to the Prophet’s crescent moon, which was to be the emblem on the Pakistan flag.8 Similar squabbling