A book that draws upon extensive archival research but comes up with trivia and sensationalism.
ALEX Von Tunzelmann read modern history at Oxford and has delved into the archives in London and New Delhi. The mountain of labour has not produced the proverbial mouse but a monkey that plays silly tricks. The author revels in the sensational.
What is the book about? The subtitle claims that it is "the secret history of the end of an empire". It could have been more accurately described as the sex lives of that sordid couple, Louis and Edwina Mountbatten, primarily; Nehru's affair with Edwina and Gandhi's obsession with sex, of which enough is written in Indian works.
Factual errors abound. One who spent days in New Delhi doing research ought to know better than to describe Indira Gandhi as Lal Bahadur Shastri's "Secretary of State for Information & Broadcasting". Churchill did not send "a Labour MP Sir Stafford Cripps to Delhi" in 1942. He was a Minister, the Lord Privy Seal, and the Declaration he proposed was important enough to deserve more than two perfunctory paragraphs. The Cabinet Mission's Plan fares no better.
Some of her disclosures from British archives are interesting. The British High Commissioner reported to London "on 3 January 1964 that the succession was sewn up for Indira Gandhi". Nehru did not espouse her cause openly. He was alert to the party's sentiments.
When Mountbatten visited India shortly after the High Commissioner's report, President S. Radhakrishnan and he "agreed that Indira should not be given the external affairs portfolio that her father was apparently thinking of granting her". Mountbatten had just met Nehru.
Mountbatten had a poor opinion of Indian leaders. Jinnah fared the worst; others, little better. Nehru was "a demagogue" and "reprehensible"; Patel was "hysterical"; and Gandhi, "an inveterate and dangerous Trotskyite".
Gandhi's role in the months preceding Partition annoyed Mountbatten. On April 15, 1947, he signed a joint appeal for peace with Jinnah. "At the same meeting, Gandhi asked Mountbatten to hand over full control of unpartitioned India to the interim government. Mountbatten answered that he could not, for it would mean handing over the reins to Congress and ignoring the Muslim League, which would precipitate civil war. Gandhi replied with a smile that, by signing the declaration, Jinnah had forsworn violence in perpetuity: he could not start a civil war now, even if he wanted to. Mountbatten was deeply shocked."
The author's admiration for Gandhi is deep and genuine. She is not the only one to be baffled by his politics. "If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, war against Germany to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race would be completely justified," he wrote. "But I do not believe in any war." He advised the British to give up the fight against Hitler and Mussolini: "Let them take possession of your beautiful island... allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them." Gandhi advised the Jews in Germany to offer passive resistance to the Nazi regime - and to give up their own lives as sacrifices. He asked them to pray for Hitler. "If even one Jew acted thus," he wrote, "he would save his self-respect and leave an example which, if it became infectious, would save the whole of Jewry and leave a rich heritage to mankind besides."
Gandhi praised Hitler. "I do not consider Herr Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted," he wrote in May 1940. "He is showing an ability that is amazing and he seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed." He regretted that Hitler had employed war rather than non-violence to achieve his aims, but nonetheless averred that the Germans of the future "will honour Herr Hitler as a genius, a brave man, matchless organiser and much more".
In 1946 he told Louis Fischer: "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions." The author wrote: "Gandhi's ambivalence towards the Nazis was matched by his feelings about the Japanese."
A British diplomat reported to London "Gandhi appeared to him to favour Japan" under the impression that if the English were out of the way, India could make an agreement with Japan. It is well known that in 1942 Gandhi and Patel expected the Axis to win. Hence the Quit India resolution, a blunder of great consequence.
The book is neither sound scholarship nor good journalism.
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