Contemporary British History

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Mountbatten and India, 1964-79: after Nehru

Rakesh Ankit

To cite this article: Rakesh Ankit (2021): Mountbatten and India, 1964-79: after￿Nehru, Contemporary British History, DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2021.1944113 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2021.1944113

© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Published online: 29 Jun 2021.

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fcbh20 CONTEMPORARY BRITISH HISTORY https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2021.1944113

ARTICLE Mountbatten and India, 1964-79: after Nehru Rakesh Ankit

POLIS, Loughborough University, Loughborough, LE11 3TU England

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS This article throws light on Lord Mountbatten’s enduring involve­ Mountbatten; India; princes; ment in India after 1964, an overlooked feature of his later life. On Indira Gandhi; emergency a number of issues such as the abolition of titles, privileges and privy purses of Indian Princes (1967–71), imposition of Emergency in India (1975), arms sales, expulsion of BBC (1970–72) and evolu­ tion of history-writing on Partition, this article evaluates his chan­ ging role as a ‘friend of India’ in Britain, while becoming an irksome interlocutor for both the British and Indian ‘official mind’. This draining of Mountbatten’s influence, though not involvement, through the 1970s, represented an inter-generational dilation of Indo-British relations.

Introduction When Lord Louis Mountbatten came to India in May 1964 for his friend Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s funeral, President Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan told him that ‘he was confident that Lal Bahadur Shastri will become Prime Minister’. Mountbatten promptly conveyed this to R.H. Belcher, then-acting British High-Commissioner (HC) in New Delhi.1 A waiting Belcher was grateful: ‘Your talk with the President was . . . of immense help and . . . it has been most fortunate that Radhakrishnan’s expectations turned out to be the truth.2 Mountbatten also congratulated Prime Minister Shastri, who, while agreeing to have a quiet lunch with him, declined his requests to let Nehru’s sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit represent India at the upcoming Commonwealth Prime Minister’s Conference or return to London as India’s envoy.3 This episode captures the changing contours of independent India’s first Governor-General’s influence in India, with the passing away of his friend and India’s first Prime Minister. This decline was an inter-generational dimming, but it did not decimate Mountbatten’s involvement in India. It side-lined it to a listening vantage—on the margins but privileged. This article is an exercise in tracing this trajectory of tailing off, which despite dwindling returns, throws an interesting light, from Mountbatten’s unique perch into certain Indian affairs and their inter-play with Indo-British relations, from the mid-1960s; a time called ‘the Other Transfer of Power in India’.4 V.P. Menon, Mountbatten’s constitutional adviser during the original transfer of power in 1947, assured him that notwithstanding Shastri’s diminutive stature, ‘there are only two and odd years to go for the next general elec­ tions . . . and . . . therefore the cabinet will hold together’.5 S.S. Khera, the last of the seven

CONTACT Rakesh Ankit [email protected] © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any med­ ium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. 2 R. ANKIT

Cabinet Secretaries who served Nehru, added that ‘the story that [Nehru’s friend] Krishna [Menon] and [daughter] Indira [Gandhi] were lined up against [Shastri] was a figment of imagination’.6 This correspondence from the first month after Nehru’s death helped Mountbatten contribute to steady the British ‘official mind’, at an uncertain time in their outlook towards India. Yet, in the considerable scholarship on Mountbatten and India, there has not been much discussion of Mountbatten’s enduring interest in Indian affairs after June 1948, i.e. after leaving the subcontinent where he had arrived in March 1947 as British India’s last Viceroy and where he stayed on in August 1947 as Dominion of India’s first Governor- General.7 In Mountbatten’s official biography, the post-1948 period, unsurprisingly, cov­ ered his naval career that saw him become First Sea Lord (1955–59) and Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) (1959–65).8 Writers appreciative of Mountbatten’s time in India remain limited to praising his ‘mission’ in 1947–48,9 while those critical of him also make their case for the same time.10 Likewise, whether the biographies of Nehru,11 or the historiography on the Partition of India,12 they are focused on the ‘first year(s)’ of Partition, Independence, Integration of the Indian states and their contentious events.13 It is in the histories of independent India and of Indo-British ties under the New Commonwealth (1949),14 itself his contribution (with others), that Mountbatten appears frequently, if episodically. The latter include (a) the first India–Pakistan conflict on Kashmir (1947–49) and its diplomatic aftermath,15 (b) the first decade of Indo-British relations within the Anglo-American pact-politics of the early-Cold War,16 (c) the Indo-China con­ flict (1962) and its side effect of seeking a resolution of the Kashmir dispute,17 (d) India’s defence preparedness in 1963,18 and (e) the India–Pakistan war of 1965.19 Before and after these, he found himself involved in events as diverse as his friend Nehru agitating the Anglo-Americans in allowing the military annexation of the Portuguese enclave in India, Goa in 1961,20 and them, in turn, being anxious around the questions After Nehru Who/ What?21 Alongside these overt instances, evidence from the Mountbatten Papers indicates his behind-the-scenes involvement in issues like the princely state of Hyderabad and its enforced accession into the Indian Union in 1948 and arms sales to the Indian (and Pakistani) Navy(s),22 while maintaining an ‘influence of friendship’ in matters personal and of personnel in Indian diplomatic affairs.23 This made him a ‘friend of India’ in the West as well as a successful channel for successive British government(s) to reach out to Nehru. In short, for two decades from 1947, he was the one Viceroy, who refused to disappear from New Delhi and remained a considerable figureof recently recalled colonial authority,24 (if waning) in post-colonial India.25 Indeed, his prolonged influence in ‘unoffi­ cial capacities . . . with post-independence India and Burma’ has not been entirely unex­ plored though neither singularly nor, given the wider aim of looking ‘at the royal family in promoting Britain’s foreign policy’,26 at depth. This article, drawing upon Mountbatten papers and British official archives as well as supplementing them with personal papers of two of his Indian contacts, begins where such accounts finish that is with the end of Nehru’s life—the time of Mountbatten’s maximum impact in New Delhi as well as in London as the CDS—and brings to light those matters relating to India on which Mountbatten remained interested, informed and tried to involve himself longer than hitherto acknowledged, albeit with mounting impervious­ ness in both the capitals and among their respective bureaucracies. Apart from (a) an CONTEMPORARY BRITISH HISTORY 3 assortment of ‘high politics’, miscellaneous matters around history-writing, public mem­ orialising (1965–70) and palace intrigues (1974–76), this long-drawn-out British narrative includes (b) reaching out to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on the fate of Indian princes when their privy purses were sought to be abolished between 1967 and 1971 and (c) on the freedom of press in reporting from India as an Emergency was imposed there in 1975. Together they serve to (a) elongate a personal history of an imperial intermediary after empire in the post-imperial half of the 20th c. in India, (b) outline the shadow of a retrospective regime and (c) portray a certain British-Indian experience. Throughout, Mountbatten and his staff continued to prove highly ‘idiosyncratic’ interlocuters as befits a self-publicist and akin to his irksome initiative ‘between 1964 and 1966 to create new conference for the Commonwealth’27; of the highest status, if not quality, for the newly created Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) (1968) and its High-Commissioners.28

War & peace, history & memory As he began to work as Nehru’s successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri started hard enough to suffera heart attack within three weeks, setting waves of concern across New Delhi as well as in London. Mountbatten read from V.P. Menon that this was a ‘tragedy greater than [Nehru’s] death . . . if anything happens to [Shastri], Indira would succeed him . . . Please therefore make a lot of fuss about her.29 This, then, was part of the personal roles that Mountbatten was involved in from this time. Sir Saville Garner, Permanent Under- Secretary (1962–65) at the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), asked Mountbatten to help, when he read from Belcher that Indira Gandhi was contemplating a holiday in either Britain or Yugoslavia, with the latter “being considered as more likely to offer privacy”. Belcher and his officials in New Delhi were naturally “not happy” and felt that “it would be a positive gain if [she] could come to Britain instead”. Mountbatten was consulted as much for his influence with Gandhi, as for his provision of “a simple and secluded house”.30 In the event, Gandhi, alongside India’s Finance Minister, came to Britain in July 1964 to represent Shastri at the Commonwealth premiers’ conference. Afterwards, Vijayalakshmi Pandit shared with Mountbatten that ‘Indira [was] “emotionally unable” to contest [Nehru’s] seat’, which the Congress party was naturally keen to retain to ‘stop a wave of demoralisation’.31 With party workers ‘disappointed’ at Gandhi’s refusal to succeed her in father’s constituency, it was Pandit who stepped in. The by-election was held on 22 November 1964 and Pandit duly won, citing her brother’s ‘memory and love for him [as] decisive’.32 Nothing, however, was more awkward politically for London than an ‘unfinished business of partition’,33 the dispute on Jammu and Kashmir, where notwithstanding New Delhi’s pliant regime in its capital Srinagar, the paramount leader of Kashmiri self- determination, Sheikh ‘Abdullah’s popularity [had] not much impaired’.34 Shastri, not enjoying his predecessor’s friendship with the Sheikh, who had nevertheless been ousted as premier in August 1953 and been largely in prison till April 1964,35 was being looked at anxiously by Britons and Indians alike as to ‘whether [he] will support Abdullah in bringing about an understanding between India and Pakistan’.36 Such was the engagement with Mountbatten and his staff by the CRO on these early post-Nehru days that some of their communications were copied. For instance, Mountbatten’s long-time secretary, Sir Ronald Brockman’s correspondence with V.P. Menon and that of the then-British High- 4 R. ANKIT

Commissioner in India (1960–65), Sir Paul Gore-Booth’s with Mountbatten were at times exact, both drawing upon the latter’s Indian contacts. The early summary of their com­ bined feelings was as under:

The new PM has more “liberal” ideas on Kashmir than Nehru had until the last few weeks of his life but (1) he lacks Nehru’s presence and support and (2) the efforts to be more liberal produced an outburst from extreme Hindus and professional anti-Pakistanis . . . The impor­ tant thing [is] to give him moral support and to induce President Ayub [of Pakistan] to keep up the conciliatory line.37

Their ideal, improbable scenario was India ‘accepting East Pakistan for Kashmir’, while a related theme of India ‘offer[ing] Ladakh’ was difficult ‘in the present state of the triangle (India/Pakistan/China)’.38 Their utopian ‘broader theme [was] of an ultimate special relation (con-federal) of India and Pakistan’. Instead, less than a year later, India and Pakistan were daggers drawn in the Rann of Kutch,39 and Mountbatten, as the British CDS, found himself at a security meeting in New Delhi on 7 May 1965. That eventually two-parts, of four-weeks each, indecisive war was waged as much by soldiers in the theatres of Kutch, Kashmir and Punjab as by its reportage then and scholarship recently.40 From London’s perspective, as Mountbatten informed Gore-Booth’s succes­ sor John Freeman, the Indian Defence Minister Y.B. Chavan and his Chiefs of Staff were ‘irritated about the British . . . that [they] had not come out more strongly to support the Indian case’. Freeman agreed and ‘hoped Mountbatten would . . . impress on the PM [Harold Wilson] the undesirability of equating India and Pakistan’. It was a suggestion after Mountbatten’s heart, who also emphasised ‘how Pakistan had sold themselves for American aid . . . and were also employing pressure by misusing CENTO and SEATO’.41 A month earlier on 7 April 1965, Mountbatten had urged the Secretary of State for Defence to be ‘sympathetic towards India’s requests for frigate building, weapon-class destroyers, fleet tanker and training submarines’, over-and-above their effect on Pakistan. A week later, he had conveyed to Prime Minister Wilson the Indian govern­ ment’s ‘anxiety for an early decision on the Oberon [submarine] for India’,42 reiterating his role as the central conduit for Indian approaches ‘so far’ and requesting for the ‘usual channels’ to take over.43 As for himself, he drew upon unusual contacts to supplement information. In mid- September 1965, with the India–Pakistan war in its climactic days, Mountbatten sent to Wilson’s Cabinet Office an appreciation of the conflict, prepared by Ms Mansell, whom he described as ‘an intelligent Indian woman, a friend of Nehru’s and married to an Englishman’. She was joined by Ms Paulette Pratt, former assistant editor of The Queen, who had visited India in 1964. Their appreciation seemed to the officials ‘to pre-suppose a degree of long-standing collusion between Pakistan and Communist China’, which the British Intelligence did not support then but which events since have confirmed.44 In view of ‘the respect’ in which Mountbatten held Mansell’s views, the Cabinet Office forwarded the report to the CRO and the Foreign Office(FO). 45 In the event, before any consideration could be called for, a ceasefire was announced, but Mountbatten warned General J.N. Chaudhuri, India’s army chief who had been his ADC in 1945, that he could not ‘pretend that Indian PR helped very much . . . a war correspondent said that he was received with open arms by Pakistan [while] every sort of difficulty was made by the Indian army’.46 In the lead-up to the Soviet-sponsored Tashkent (January 1966) talks, he reached out to CONTEMPORARY BRITISH HISTORY 5

General K.M. Cariappa, the first Indian Commander-in-Chief (1949–53), to re-emphasise his impression that ‘the PR machine of Pakistan work[s] more effectively’.47 As Shastri was meeting Ayub in Tashkent, Mountbatten was corresponding with Chaudhuri, about his continuing ‘distress at the poor public relations by India; in particular regard to Kashmir’. He ‘stressed the care needed to put newspaper proprietors in the UK —Lord Thomson, Sir Max Aitken, Lord Astor, Daniel Astor, Cudlipp and Mr Jacobson— straight’.48 Then, in June 1967, when the Chancellor of Exchequer James Callaghan tried ‘to link British refusal to grant India credit for Leander [frigates] to Indian stand on the West Asian conflict’,Mountbatten was approached by the Government of India (GoI) as an ‘appropriate person to intervene’.49 Indira Gandhi, before becoming Prime Minister, had felt ‘a lack of contact between India and the British public’ in the aftermath of the 1965 war. She saw the ‘Britishers of [her] generation and earlier [as] prejudiced against India because of their colonial memories but . . . the younger generation [as] perhaps merely bored with India’.50 Within a month of her taking over the premiership in January 1966, then India’s Deputy-High-Commissioner in London and later her Secretary (1967–73) P.N. Haksar set out his disbelief in ‘the elaborate mythology . . . about our post-independence relationship with Britain’ thus:

Our becoming part of the Commonwealth saved us from the Cold War . . . Britain too derived benefits . . . [Now] . . . we have to develop direct relationship with the USA as we have developed with USSR . . . we simply must now stop rushing to this country [UK].51

In mid-1968, as someone who was a pillar of this mythology, Mountbatten ‘accepted an invitation from the President of India to chair a centenary celebration committee’ in Britain of Mohandas Gandhi’s birth centenary (1869–1969). For the newly created FCO, this proved a peculiar challenge as they knew ‘remarkably little’ about the financial and other resources Mountbatten had in mind, as well as his ‘precise plans’. As far as they were concerned, ‘the onus’ was entirely on Mountbatten and their ‘role [was] ancillary’ but they worried that it was ‘very likely that there will be insufficient public interest or private financial contribution [and] that HMG will be asked to provide funds’. Instead, they mulled over ‘an inexpensive act . . . a Gandhi commemorative postage stamp’ in the GPO’s list for 1969.52 Their worries were not unfounded, for Mountbatten sought and received GBP 5, 000 from the Chancellor of Exchequer towards this centenary committee, to organise a number of public events that involved the Prime Minister, the Prince of Wales and the Archbishop of Canterbury.53 In addition, the treasury contributed GBP 4, 000 towards the cost of a statue of Gandhi in Tavistock Square, London and GBP 10, 000 for a British pavilion at the Gandhi Exhibition in New Delhi. And, the GPO issued the commemorative stamp, while the India Office Library mounted a special exhibition.54 In a stark but unsurprisingly unequal contrast, seven years later, during the centenary celebrations of the birth of Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1976), founder of Pakistan, Mountbatten was conspicuous by his absence.55 Nor did the British government of the day do anything comparable to 1969.56 Alongside this selective public memorialising, this was also the time when history- writing on the Partitioned end of British empire in India took off in right earnest at the hands of professional historians, with the persona of Mountbatten right at the centre of it. It began with the publication in 1970 of The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives 1935–1947 (Allen & Unwin), edited by C.H. Philips and M.D. Wainwright, and H.V. Hodson’s 6 R. ANKIT book The Great Divide: Britain—India—Pakistan (OUP, 1969). Hodson, an All Souls scholar and ex-editor of The Sunday Times who had been Reforms Commissioner in New Delhi in the 1940s and Director of the Empire Division in Ministry of Information in London in the 1930s, was given privileged access to Mountbatten Papers and allowed to quote from them by the former Viceroy, whose historical vanity was next to none and fuelled his desire to encase the early historiography on Partition around his agency.57 Hodson’s access led Indian historians B. Krishna (for his biography of Vallabhbhai Patel) and S. Gopal and B. Nanda (for their biographies of Jawaharlal Nehru) to request Mountbatten to see documents from 1947 to 48. Earlier, in 1962, another Indian historian Dr. Tara Chand had approached the British government for ‘access to private collections of papers of Indian interest in UK’ for his GoI-sponsored history of the Indian freedom movement. The CRO had replied then that while he could see all the ‘open period’ papers, there was ‘no immediate likelihood’ of either the Churchill or the Mountbatten papers, adding that ‘it would [not] be appropriate for the CRO to intervene’.58 Now, eight years later, Mountbatten’s staff asked the HMG for advice and the FCO replied that, for the period before 15 August 1947, Indian biographers should be asked to give the following undertakings:

(i) Not to publish . . . any documents which they see or make references to them, (ii) To submit their ms to the Secretary of the Cabinet for scrutiny and to accept any amendments . . . (iii) Access to the papers relating to the period after 15 August is a matter between Mountbatten, the Queen and the Government of India. Mountbatten was further urged to ‘institute some guidelines for the use to which the material is put [as] much of it concerns Kashmir [and] a malicious historian could cause a lot of trouble’. Moreover, it was decided not to relinquish royal ‘control over these records’, not only because London would lose influence over their use but also because ‘it might result in their publication before those on the Transfer of Power and other docu­ ments covered by the 30-year rule’; the magnum opus XII–volumes undertaking under the chief editorship of Prof. Nicholas Mansergh that was sanctioned in 1967 by the Prime Minister and was to be periodically published between 1970 and 1983.59 Finally, since Hodson had quoted some documents, ‘it was possible that [Indians] may argue that they are being treated more harshly’ but, ‘if extracts were published out of context’, they could be ‘harmful and Mountbatten’s attention should be drawn to them’.60 Consequently, while selections from the 4000 files of Mountbatten papers were included in volumes VII to XII of the Transfer of Power series and the above-mentioned biographies would appear over 1975–80, it was not until 1991 that a summary catalogue of the Mountbatten collection was prepared and published.61

The Indian princes & their privy purses From the late-1960s, Mountbatten began to be ‘terribly worried’ at the ruling Congress party’s resolution to abolish the privy purses of Indian princes. In the process, he tremendously worried the CRO/FCO and successive British High-Commissioners in New Delhi, in a saga that stretched from mid-1967 to mid-1970. This was his last private hurrah in India and it ended by rendering him irrelevant by both sides of the Indo-British inter-governmental relations.62 As the Congress party’s resolution became a major CONTEMPORARY BRITISH HISTORY 7 political controversy in India, in addition to involving legal and constitutional problems for the Indira Gandhi government,63 the Prime Minister, who in the past had openly criticised the princes and disliked the successful political activities of some of them, came under increasing pressure to implement the resolution, which was easier said than done.64 Meanwhile, Mountbatten felt ‘personally committed’ to this matter as it was his close collaboration with Nehru and his deputy Vallabhbhai Patel, minister responsible for the princely states, in 1947–48 that had prevailed upon the rulers to accept the privy purse as a ‘quid pro quo for the surrender of their sovereignty’ and accession to India.65 To that extent, he regarded the proposed abolition as ‘a breach of [his] solemn undertaking’. Approached by the princes, Mountbatten regarded it as ‘his duty to make a personal appeal to Mrs Gandhi’. It was obvious to the CRO that there was ‘a risk that his interven­ tion may be resented’ and they would convey this to him but, as he felt that he must ‘go ahead’, they were limited to working over his drafts and restraining him from not seeking ‘any publicity’. Their intention was to strike a balance between delivering Mountbatten’s ‘purely personal approach’ to the Indian authorities, while underlining that ‘the HMG in no way associate[d] themselves with [it]’. Indeed, as these privy purses were arranged by the Indian government after independence, London had no locus standi in the matter. Though understanding of Mountbatten’s motivations, the CRO were ‘very doubtful’ from the beginning, ‘whether it will be effective’. Instead, their concern was that, ‘in the present, sensitive stage of our relations with India, it will . . . cause damage’.66 They warned Garner that

If Lord Mountbatten becomes involved over princely privileges, it would lead to charges of his and our interfering in matters, which were the sole concern of Indians. This would be unhelpful to our general relations and also result in erosion of Lord Mountbatten’s high standing in India . . . It would be preferable to give a general warning to [him] about the political delicacy of this problem.67

This last bit was a reference to the 1967 general elections in India, wherein some princely families—opposed to the Congress—had demonstrated their considerable electoral power in their states.68 Garner hosted Mountbatten on 26 July 1967, when the latter called to express his concern, having been ‘approached by the Maharaja of Jaipur’. The Maharaja had claimed that he would lose something like GBP 180, 000 a year post- abolition of his privy purse and would ‘take up residence in this country’. Mountbatten, adding that ‘many of the lesser princes would be vitally affected [with] privy purses [their] only source of livelihood’, told Garner that he felt ‘a deep sense of personal responsibility since he [had] induced the Princes to accept the arrangements’ in 1947. He was wonder­ ing ‘how best’ to help, as he accepted ‘that any publicity would be fatal and it would be unwise to reveal the princes’ approach . . . ’ Thinking aloud that perhaps ‘the best course would be for him to write privately to Mrs Gandhi emphasising his own personal responsibility and her father’s reputation’, Mountbatten was told by Garner that they ought to consult the British High-Commissioner in New Delhi, John Freeman. While ‘open to suggestion’, Mountbatten was ‘anxious to despatch his letter’ soonest through Freeman and produced a flowery draft, paragraphs of which Garner wished ‘could be watered down’,69 as he forwarded it to Freeman. An impatient Mountbatten indepen­ dently reached out to Freeman thus: ‘Maharaja of Jaipur came to see me . . . Maharaja of 8 R. ANKIT

Bikaner wrote to me . . . My honour is at stake . . . but for my relationship to the King and the trust they placed in me, they would never have accepted [privy purses]’.70 Simultaneously, Mountbatten also left two letters from the Maharaja of Jaipur, who was then serving as India’s Ambassador in Spain, for his wife and son and asked Garner to get these delivered by the High-Commission. The Maharaja claimed that his mail, sent through the Indian diplomatic bag, was being opened and Garner added to Freeman that ‘there was perhaps occasion for turning blind eyes’.71 Two days later, on 28 July 1967, Mountbatten approached Garner again, informing that in response to a request from the Indian High-Commission in London to contribute in a publication commemorating the 20th anniversary of Indian independence, he ‘had the brainwave of writing a brief histor­ ical review . . . an indirect way of making my views on the privy purses known . . . If you feel this would be counter-productive and embarrassing then [it] could be watered down but it would be dishonest to omit’.72 Faced with these missives, John Freeman replied to Garner in no uncertain terms. He began by cautioning that privy purses were a subject of ‘acute political sensitivity’, on which Indira Gandhi had ‘a certain personal commitment’. However much, Mountbatten emphasised that he was acting in a ‘private capacity’, for him to write to her could be ‘construed as interference in Indian affairs and would not help the cause’, especially in light of Mountbatten’s recent rebuffed interventions in New Delhi over the appointment of India’s envoy in London. In April 1967, Mountbatten had suggested to Gandhi that his friend and her aunt Vijayalakshmi Pandit should be re-sent as India’s envoy in London.73 Justice Shanti Dhavan was appointed instead and a bitter Pandit would frame her self- serving anguish at Mountbatten in terms of ‘the West writing India off’.74 Still, Freeman acknowledged Mountbatten’s ‘sense of personal honour’ and was ‘ready to communicate his letter’, but with some deletions. Freeman also sought the authority to state that Mountbatten was writing in a ‘purely personal capacity’, that to transmit the letter was ‘an act of courtesy’ to him and that London did not ‘associate themselves with it’.75 The passage that Freeman wanted deleted read as follows and reflect Mountbatten’s sense of himself, his surroundings and Indian sensibilities:

If the GoI and particularly a Congress party government, which gave their word to the original settlement, were now to break it, the damage to India’s good faith would be immeasurable and India’s image in international affairsfatally affected. . . If there is anything I can do to help you, please let me know as I am so anxious to help preserve your father’s good name, as well as that of the GoI.

On 1 August 1967, Mountbatten’s watered-down letter to Indira Gandhi was despatched to New Delhi. It dwelt, respectively, on the historical background and ‘his honour apart from those of your father and Vallabhbhai [Patel]’, called ‘privy purses the price paid for the integration of India’ and ended with re-emphasising the ‘good faith of your father’. His simultaneous letter to the Maharaja of Jaipur also confirmed Mountbatten’s meetings with Sir Michael Adeane, private secretary (1953–72) to the Queen, since he was respon­ sible directly to the King after 15 August 1947 as the Governor-General. He also wrote to the Maharaja of Bikaner, reassuring him that he would do all he could while admitting ‘that any move indicating pressure from outside would make the position difficult’.76 And, Mountbatten conveyed the same to the Maharao of Kutch, another ex-ruler, who had been in touch. CONTEMPORARY BRITISH HISTORY 9

A brief look at the tone of these approaches gives a glimpse of the personal feelings that were being availed upon by these princes. The Maharaja of Bikaner had reminded Mountbatten that as ‘the first Governor-General . . . the word of the GoI was conveyed through you [and] it would be for you to [state] the importance of sacred agreement’. The Maharao of Kutch had begun by recalling Mountbatten explaining to him in 1947 ‘the advantages to India and to Kutch, acceding’. While the constitutionally amended loss of privy purses was a financial blow to many princes, worse was their ‘feeling’ that the present government were ‘prepared to repudiate solemn obligations [for] their immedi­ ate convenience’. He, of course, knew that Mountbatten had ‘long ceased to exercise any responsibility for India’ but called upon his ‘esteem . . . as one of the architects of new India . . . at the prospect of such a blow to [it] which the princes relied on’.77 Meanwhile, forewarning Freeman of Mountbatten’s letter in his incoming post, the CRO expressed their gratitude for his advice as a result of which it was now amended, while adding their concern that against their advice, his ‘letters to the Maharajas go too far in revealing the action’. As a ‘final embellishment’, they informed Freeman about the simultaneous approach from the Indian High-Commission in London to Mountbatten to contribute in the volume commemorative of the transfer of power and his insistence on not removing ‘the references to privy purses altogether’ from it.78 Garner added his personal apprecia­ tion as well as apology to Freeman

If the letters from Maharaja of Jaipur . . . caused any embarrassment . . . I hope the occasion will not recur. But, the object of the exercise is to persuade Mountbatten to be as reasonable as possible . . . It would not have helped to refuse Mountbatten’s request and he is not a particularly easy person to say “no” to.79

He was more right about the apology than the appreciation, for despite their misgivings, this business of ‘sending by hand of a Chancery Secretary [in New Delhi] the two letters from the Maharaja of Jaipur to his wife and son’ had the potential of metamorphosing into a major diplomatic row. Officialsat the High-Commission were ‘afraid that the Jaipurs may refer to [this] in some future correspondence (which may be opened by Indian autho­ rities)’ and Freeman decreed that henceforth his ‘High-Commission should not be involved in any of the princely families’.80 For the moment, he was delivering Mountbatten’s letter to the Prime Minister, to her trusted secretary P.N. Haksar on 10 August 1967. Sending to Garner the gist of their conversation, he wrote that while Haksar said that he ‘fully understood HMG’s position’, he also ‘wondered’ if they had not ‘already compromised it by delivering such a letter’. Freeman fell back on the line of showing ‘proper consideration for Lord Mountbatten’s unique position without compro­ mising the correctness of HMG’s relations with GoI’. Haksar mischievously claimed that he was actually ‘troubled on [Freeman’s] behalf that the existence of the letter would become known’. He went on to make a ‘heavy weather’ of different eventualities and pondered whether Freeman would object to the ‘diplomatic lie’ that ‘Mrs Gandhi had received the letter direct through the post’! Upon Freeman’s demurral, Haksar said that it would be ‘wisest to sound out Mrs Gandhi herself on whether she would be prepared to authorise [it]’. The message from an ‘entirely friendly’ if disingenuous Haksar was clear: ‘Mountbatten had every right to express his personal views to Mrs Gandhi in private [but] HMG [should] not be unwittingly involved in a highly controversial domestic affair’.81 It was received by Garner with an appropriate defensiveness: 10 R. ANKIT

I take it that there is no difficulty over the use of the diplomatic bag for the conveyance of a confidential letter from a former Governor-General to a PM without any responsibility for it. I assume that Haksar’s anxiety centres on you delivering the letter . . . You should take the letter back and send it through the post.82

While there proved no need for it, as the Prime Minister accepted the letter ‘without rancour’ recognising Freeman as no more than ‘a postman’,83 attempts to use the diplomatic bag by Mountbatten for non-government business were increasing. Jai Singh, second son of the Maharaja of Jaipur, came to the British High-Commission and informed officialsthat Mountbatten had ‘asked [for] three documents’ from 1947 to 48. He had come to deliver these, ‘for them to be forwarded’. The once burnt twice shy High- Commission staff declined, whereupon Jai Singh urged them ‘to keep [them] pending any reply from London’.84 His hope was extinguished when Freeman repeated his unhappi­ ness at this continuing misuse of the official bag to the future Permanent Under-Secretary (1973–75) at the FCO, Sir Thomas Brimelow, who conveyed Freeman’s feeling to Mountbatten adding his own ‘fear to use the bag for . . . persons in dispute with the Indian government’.85 The FCO’s South Asia Department’s worries could not be stressed more:

Due to the delicate correspondence, great pains were taken by the British HC not to disclose that our bag was being used . . . the only reason why [this] was agreed to was that these letters would undoubtedly have been intercepted by the Indian authorities . . . However, were [they] to learn of our cooperation . . . the consequences to HMG would be grave.86

By now, John Freeman was also having second thoughts over personally delivering Mountbatten’s letter. He reflected that perhaps he ‘took too big a risk’ but wondered if ‘it was a calculated risk’. He was confident that they will ‘hear no more’ but guessed if it will be ‘the same about the Jaipur letters and [those] to the various princes’. Ultimately, they had ‘with the greatest practicable discretion . . . choked off any intention the princes may have formed . . . to use the HC as a continuing channel to Mountbatten’. It remained ‘politically a loaded subject’ and they needed to remain ‘very careful, to persuade Mountbatten to be reasonable’ and that required judging ‘the degree of facility it was tactically wise to afford him’. Eventually, he hoped that Mountbatten ‘will feel that he has done his duty and can let things take their course’.87 It was a hope that Garner was eager to share, having ‘told Mountbatten in no uncertain terms how tiresome [and] tricky’ the matter was.88 In the meantime, all they could do was watch out for any press reference to Mountbatten’s letter to Gandhi. That did not take long to come albeit in an indirect, approving and thus inconsequential manner, when on 2 September 1967, March of the Nation—a Bombay weekly with a circulation of 6300, which supported the opposition Swatantra Party that, in turn, supported the Princes—had a front-page story titled ‘Mountbatten suggests caution’.89 More embarrassing were the continuing pleas for support like those from Rao Govardhan Singh (legal adviser to the Rajmata of Partabgarh), who asked Freeman in all seriousness ‘whether Lord Mountbatten will be pleased to come over to India if recalled by the Rulers of Indian States Coordination Committee as an Adviser’ or if ‘a deputation of the Indian Princes should meet HM Queen’! He believed that there still were ‘chances for the rulers’ revival if HMG offer[ed] their support in view of their past relations’.90 Not content thus, he went on to claim that as in 1947, ‘Lord Mountbatten had advised a separate States Dominion . . . [he] should be CONTEMPORARY BRITISH HISTORY 11 appointed as the Governor-General and HMG should repeal the Indian Independence Act’!91 Freeman straight-batted this entreaty by replying that ‘unfortunately [it was] not possible to assist in approaching Lord Mountbatten or HM Queen to discuss [these] matters’.92 Mountbatten though was still exuding confidence in his personal correspon­ dence. Relating his recent efforts to Vijayalakshmi Pandit, he concluded ‘that the effect on India’s credit abroad would be disastrous if they are prepared to . . . go back on their word of honour’.93 He showed himself out of touch with the gathering public mood and the growing political confidence of the Prime Minister, and by July 1968, Gandhi’s govern­ ment had decided to go ahead with the abolition of the privy purses albeit ‘in a manner that should avoid undue hardship’. The question for the British officials now was whether to draw this to Mountbatten’s attention and the answer was obvious. It was neither in the princes’ interest and certainly not in London’s interest ‘to re-awaken Lord Mountbatten’s interest’.94 It was about to prove more, when in November 1968, Mountbatten took ‘his case’ to Robert McNamara, then-president of the World Bank, and tackled some numbers. Privy purse payments to the princes had ‘fallen from £4.25 million in 1951 to £2.5 million in 1968 [and] were expected to come down to £2 million over the next [decade]’. Mountbatten believed that ‘the princes were pawns in a [intra-Congress] power struggle’ and asked McNamara to talk to Morarji Desai, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister in Gandhi’s government, without mentioning his name.95 Simultaneously, Mountbatten reached out to his oldest, and once highest-ranked, contact in India: Chakravarty Rajagopalachari, who had succeeded him as Governor-General in June 1948. Rajaji, as he was popularly called, had since drifted away from Nehru and formed his party, Swatantra in 1959. In the two general elections of 1962 and 1967, it had won 18 and 44 seats, respectively, and the latter figure gave it a certain crucial position in the parliamen­ tary voting on the constitutional amendments required to abolish the privy purses. The government needed two-thirds majority in both houses to be able to do so and Rajaji’s party, which stood for a certain kind of ‘Indian conservatism’,96 could thwart it. So, Mountbatten wrote to him:

If a country is prepared to vote by a 2-3rds majority for a change in the constitution to escape their legitimate financialcontracts, foreign interests would become chary . . . It is the intention of [government] to try and rush this measure . . . The balance of power rests with you . . . If anyone knew I had been urging this line of action on you, it would be counter-productive.97

This correspondence between the first and second Governor-Generals of independent India, twenty years on from their holding of those posts, is a fascinating mix of myth and memory. That month, Mountbatten delivered the second Nehru Memorial Lecture at Trinity College, Cambridge, ‘Jawaharlal’s old college’, while Rajaji urged him to consider writing a letter to The Times on the privy purses’ topic. Both affirmed to each other of their efforts ‘to prevent [government] from obtaining a 2–3rds majority in [this] unworthy move’.98 That month, Mountbatten also received another visit from the Maharaja of Bikaner in London ‘to see whether [he] could [make] a last-minute appeal’. He was again getting restless but realised enough of the sensitivities involved, to draw the line at writing to The Times ‘without government approval’. He reached out to Sir Paul Gore- Booth, now Permanent Under-Secretary (1965–69) of the FO and Head of HM Diplomatic Service (1968–69) for advice albeit with a typical boast: ‘It is absolutely monstrous that this 12 R. ANKIT man, [Y.B.] Chavan (on whose head I had a price when I was Viceroy as he was a Goonda) should be breaking the pledges given by Nehru and Patel . . . What can we do about this?’99 Much like the Garner-Freeman tag-team of 1967, now Gore-Booth wrote to Sir Morrice James, Freeman’s successor in New Delhi to coordinate their response to Mountbatten. James reported that the legislation on abolishing privy purses was ‘likely to take form of a compromise’ by ‘phasing [them] out over 20–30 years’ and this made them further acceptable to ‘Indian opinion (apart from Swatantra Party and the Princes)’. There was thus nothing to be done but to ‘sympathise with Mountbatten’s feelings . . . ’ If anything, James took exception to Mountbatten’s letter to Rajagopalachari, calling it ‘a direct interference in Indian internal affairs . . . very imprudent’. To James, ‘at 90, Rajaji [had] the unpredictability of extreme old age’ and ‘could prove an awkward ally’ to Mountbatten. James termed Rajaji’s suggestion to Mountbatten to write to The Times as ‘thoroughly mischievous’. More serious though was his concern ‘about the terms in which Mountbatten refers to Chavan’. As India’s Home Minister, Chavan’s position was like that of Mountbatten’s old comrade Patel and as the third most powerful person in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet, the strong regional satrap from Bombay/Maharastra—the spearhead behind the abolition—was a ‘potential future PM’ whom, it was ‘foolish [to] risk antagonising’.100 It was now Gore-Booth’s turn to pass on James’ message to Mountbatten that a ‘public intervention’ by him would be ‘widely resented as gratui­ tous . . . likely be harmful to princes’, link Mountbatten ‘with HMG in the minds of many Indians’ and do ‘serious damage to our relations’. As Mountbatten had ‘already put [his] views to Mrs Gandhi’ in 1967, Gore-Booth could not see ‘what else’ he could do. It was ‘for the Princes to negotiate’ and Mountbatten could ‘speak to Mrs Gandhi at the Commonwealth PM meeting, [urging] “minimum of hardship” to [them]’, in early-1969.101 Instead, in a case of delayed reaction, Mountbatten’s August 1967 letter became a matter of public controversy now and on 1 January 1969, as she was leaving for London for this Commonwealth premiers’ meeting, Indira Gandhi was asked in a press conference in New Delhi for her views on Mountbatten’s ‘communication’. She deflected the question by asking, ‘on his communication or privy purses?’ When the questioner replied ‘on privy purses’, she responded, ‘then why bring in Mountbatten? Government’s views are very well known and I am fully committed to them’.102 When one of the correspondents persisted and pointedly asked, ‘what business has Lord Mountbatten to interfere in our affairs?’, the Prime Minister replied in words rather wounding: ‘If some­ body writes a personal letter giving his views, I do not think it is interference. A lot of people write to me . . . ’103 In parliament next month, she would confirm the receipt of a ‘very private’ communication from Mountbatten but also that ‘no reply had been sent’.104 With the Lord thus reduced to ‘a lot of people’, Gandhi’s reaction was not lost on the High-Commissioner. Morrice James hastened to write to Gore-Booth that ‘in case, Mountbatten returns to the charge’, let him know about this ‘exchange’. James’ reading of the Prime Minister’s reaction was that

. . . while it has not caused offence to her . . . it would cause irritation . . . for him to make any public demarche. That Mountbatten’s private letter should be the subject of . . . a press conference reinforces the point that no exchange of this kind can be regarded as confiden­ tial . . . I hope therefore that Mountbatten will be prepared to . . . leave the matter.105 CONTEMPORARY BRITISH HISTORY 13

This communication triggered anticipation of any apology(s) that might be required. Mountbatten informed Prime Minister Wilson’s office that he will ‘say that he is sorry to hear his letter was leaked, had no intention of interfering but felt personally involved’, when he saw Gandhi in London. The FCO prepared itself to admit, ‘if asked directly’, that Mountbatten’s letter in 1967 was delivered by Freeman as ‘a perfectly normal courtesy’ but no more and instructed the High-Commission accordingly.106 The South Asia Department prepared their talking points for Permanent Under-Secretary Sir Denis Greenhill’s talk with the visiting P.N. Haksar. These recognised ‘privy purses to be a domestic matter’ and reduced Mountbatten’s views to ‘personal opinions’.107 This damage-control, however, did not end the saga here. Later that year, on 15 June 1969, Mountbatten was called upon by the visiting president and general secretary of the Congress party.108 A concerned James had reiterated to the FCO to warn him against raising the question of the privy purses with them. This time though, one line of thought in the FCO was willing to let Mountbatten ‘use his own discretion’. It pointed out that Mountbatten was playing host at the FCO’s ‘request (made at James’ suggestion)’ and, as both sides knew of each other’s ‘strong views’, it could be considered ‘impertinent’, to ask Mountbatten to ‘refrain’ it. Then, some FCO officials did not believe that Mountbatten’s views were ‘likely to harm Indo-British relations . . . ’ any more. Finally, there was a ‘limit to [giving] advice’ in such matters. Recently, on Morrice James’ say-so, the FCO had asked Mountbatten to ‘decline to provide a message for a commemorative volume on the birthday of the Rajmata Scindia of Gwalior [state] (an opponent of Congress)’. Mountbatten had ‘very courteously’ demurred because of his ‘close personal friendship’ but equally had provided a ‘perfectly innocuous message’.109 After all, he still considered himself ‘the Ombudsman for the Indian Princes’.110 In September 1970, post the parliamentary stalemate (the bill was passed in the lower house but stumbled in the upper house, falling short of required two–thirds majority by a narrow margin), the President of India, acting on the advice of the government, issued an ordinance ‘de-recognising’ the Indian princes. They challenged the order in the Supreme Court and the judiciary decided that it was ultra vires of the constitution. The princes had ceded their states to India (or Pakistan) in 1947 on the understanding that their position would be recognised in perpetuity and they would receive privy purses as compensation for loss of revenue/property. With Indira Gandhi using the issue as a symbol of her so-called ‘leftward turns’ to ‘destroy privilege and spread equality’,111 it was a matter of time and London pre-empted Mountbatten by re-declaring that it had no locus standi and no intention of ‘becoming involved’.112 Before the month was out, however, it was faced with involvement of another kind. In September 1970, the Maharao of Kutch approached Mountbatten claiming that he could ‘no longer live in Kutch, where [his] reduction to the status of a private citizen will expose [him] to harassment’. Recalling that his ‘house [had] always been loyal to the Crown’, he plaintively asked if it ‘would be possible for [him] to acquire British citizenship or permission to reside permanently in Britain?’113 Mountbatten sent this letter to Greenhill adding thus: ‘Madan Singh’s letter is really rather pathetic . . . I need hardly say that I will go surety for him’.114 The FCO officials now set their mind to this turn of events and weighed the implications of their response to this request. They noted that this was ‘the first [such] letter’ received and while the answer to this individual enquiry was simply that ‘provided the Maharao has adequate funds in this country, he would get 14 R. ANKIT permission to stay and, after five years, could apply for British nationality’, there were two clouds on the horizon: one, the immigration act of 1971 was shortly to come before the parliament and was expected to ‘make the situation more difficult’ for cases like these,115 and two, this might be ‘the first of many requests from the Princes’ and necessitated a ‘general policy’.116 It was considered ‘not unlikely that other dispos­ sessed rulers may appeal’ to Mountbatten or that ‘he has already [not] been active on their behalf’.117 They were right, for after her comprehensive victory in the general elections held in March 1971, Mountbatten again appealed to Gandhi to ‘feel inclined to be generous’ and emphasising that her father ‘would have approved of what I am writing now’, he appealed to ‘his daughter’.118 He was even cautiously hopeful in his communication with the Maharaja of Bikaner that he had ‘continued to help . . . but [had] to be careful not to come out into the open as this proved counterproductive’.119 He could not be more wrong about both his relevance and her generosity and in late-1971, her government successfully achieved an amendment to the constitution in the newly elected parliament, bringing the curtain down on this relic of the Raj.

Indira’s India, the emergency & British institutions In the years 1971 to 1975, Indira Gandhi’s political vigour compromised with none, backed as she was by ‘the Indian people’.120 Whether parlaying with her Pakistani counterpart Zulfikar Ali Bhutto at Simla in 1972, in the aftermath of India’s victory in the December 1971 war that saw the birth of Bangladesh,121 or pushing back the Communist Party of India (Marxists) in the West Bengal state election of the same year,122 she felt the onset of ‘momentous’ times.123 One of the unexpected targets of this tumult turned out to be the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In the summer of 1970, the broadcast of two Louis Malle documentary films, Calcutta and Phantom India offering ‘impressionistic sketches of everyday life’ on BBC2, caused outrage amongst Indians in Britain and the Indian government, ‘for what were perceived as prejudicial and negative depictions’. As a result, the BBC was expelled from India and would remain so until 1972.124 During this period, its Director-General Charles Curran and its Controller for Overseas Donald Stephenson tried many approaches, one of whom happened to be Mountbatten who, while he may have felt ‘utterly powerless’ on the princes’ question,125 was never short of advice in matters Indian. In October 1970, Stephenson wrote to Mountbatten relating his woes as the GoI withdrew the BBC’s accreditation, requiring him ‘to discon­ tinue the office in New Delhi’ established in 1942. Calling him as the one person ‘whose reputation in Indian minds remained such as to make a personal letter to Mrs Gandhi a factor, which might just tip the scale’,126 Stephenson requested for it. Mountbatten took a week to reply on this ‘self-inflicted wound’ by New Delhi, and concluded with a parenthesis, symbolising the shifting sands of time:

A few months ago, I would have written to Mrs Gandhi without hesitation for we have been friends for 23 years . . . [However] . . . recently we have been at odds . . . over the Indian princes . . . and she has gone diametrically against every word of advice I have given her. I feel it might be positively counter-productive for me to enter into the problem of the BBC.127 CONTEMPORARY BRITISH HISTORY 15

Instead, he sent Stephenson’s letter to Morrice James and deferred to James’ judgement on whether ‘a tactfully worded letter from me would still have the effect’. To James too, Mountbatten confessed his ‘greatly weakened position with Mrs Gandhi over [his] failure [on] the Princes’. In this particular instance though, he did wonder why the GoI were ‘damaging themselves when . . . they took no steps against the French, who made the films and showed them first’.128 James, who was careful to copy his reply to the FCO, wrote predictably. He did not think that ‘a letter . . . would serve a useful purpose’ and based this opinion on ‘Mrs Gandhi’s imperviousness to recent approaches from [Mountbatten]’. However, it seemed to James that ‘some good could be done if Mountbatten were to speak suitably to [Indian HC in London] Apa Pant . . . this would carry more weight’.129 This advice was to no avail either and in 1971, Gandhi’s annus mirabilis, Mountbatten did not do more than give a letter of introduction to Lady Alexandra Metcalfe (Curzon) for Haksar, when she went to India in June–July 1971 as Chairperson of the Overseas Relief and Welfare Committee for the East Pakistan Refugees in India,130 and meet Gandhi for a breakfast meeting on 2 November 1971, at her London hotel, before she left for Oxford to receive her honorary degree.131 Mountbatten’s next brush with Indian officialdom came in the summer of 1973. That year, his long-time secretary Brockman’s son travelled to India and, upon his return, complained to Mountbatten about ‘anti-British propaganda’ being aired at the Red Fort in Delhi. He had gone to the Son-et-Lumiere show there and saw its historical portions depicting (a) ‘direct causal relationship’ between the Indian ‘mutiny’ of 1857 and the Indian independence of 1947 and (b) the British ‘fighting the Indian National Army [INA] and nobody else in Burma’ in 1944–45 in the Second World War.132 Mountbatten took this seriously enough to forward the complaint to the British High-Commission in New Delhi, adding to it from his own memories as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in South East Asia thus:

There was only one INA division that “fought” against us . . . They were most useless . . . and it seems ludicrous that the real brave Indians who fought to defend India and clear the Japanese out of Burma should be belittled. Is there anything we can do about this?133

The British High-Commission was in no mood to fight these battles of the past. It patiently explained that the said Son-et-Lumiere was a mere tourist attraction; a dramatised recrea­ tion of history and, to that extent, ‘biased’. Second, it linked it to Gandhi’s attempts ‘to revive the memory of the independence struggle of which the younger generation has no experience’. The main motive was ‘to remind young voters that they owe their freedom to the Congress Party’, at a rather shaky time for it.134 Third, it reassured Mountbatten, by bringing up a series of floats in the Republic-Day parade from January 1973, that these paid ‘tribute to the British worthies of the early Congress’, with the ‘final one dedicated to reconciliation with British friends—amongst whom, you figured prominently’. Finally, it reminded him that in domestic politics and national memory, members of the INA—a group put together from the Indian soldiers who had surrendered in Singapore in 1942— were ‘freedom fighters . . . ’135 One of these, Shah Nawaz Khan, had been a parliamentary secretary and deputy minister under Nehru and had risen to the cabinet under Gandhi. The moving spirit behind the INA, Subhash Chandra Bose (1897–1945) was a ‘national hero’.136 Given all this, it was futile to apply any ‘outside pressure’. Ultimately, it assured Mountbatten that ‘these myths and attitudes [had no] serious effect’ on Indo-British 16 R. ANKIT relations,137 which was a sentiment shared by their Indian counterpart in London, B.K. Nehru, who would report to New Delhi, later in the year, after calling on Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home that ‘relations had never been as good as they were now’.138 Still, in June 1973, Mountbatten brought up the INA issue with Indira Gandhi, when she visited London, linking it with the retention of 90, 000 Pakistan POWs in Indian camps; 18 months from the 1971 war.139 Letting her know that this was ‘doing India’s image a great deal of harm, not only in the UK’, he suggested that while the ‘2–300 men accused of crimes be kept back and tried . . . the rest should be sent home’. Bringing up German and Italian POWs and their return ‘at the end of the war in Europe’, he claimed that he himself ‘returned all the 600, 000 Japanese POWs . . . only [keeping] back the war criminals’.140 Whether POWs or diplomatic personnel, Mountbatten’s interventions in Indian affairs now remained largely personal. In 1974, he received two letters from Vijayalakshmi Pandit requesting him to intervene with the Prime Minister ‘to protect’ Pandit at Dehradun. Mountbatten refused to do so citing the ‘strength of feelings that exist[ed] between them’ and continuing that ‘even when I have a successful talk with [Gandhi], she does not do what she has promised to help her aunt’.141 On 21 October 1974, Gandhi wrote to Mountbatten addressing him as ‘Lord Louis’ instead of ‘Dickie’, ending ‘Yours Sincerely’ instead of ‘Yours Affectionately’ and signing herself ‘Indira Gandhi’, in full. Mountbatten noted this and sought to put it down either to overwork or to the formal nature of the letter, but it symbolised their distant relations. Soon though, he was planning his last chukka in Indian affairs, which has gone over­ looked in the scholarship on him, ‘the royal family, and British influence in post- independence India’. In fact, it is a fit case to looked at, for it illuminates ‘his dealings in private [with] the royal family in promoting Britain’s foreign policy’.142 The episode began in November 1974, when B.K. Nehru met Thomas Brimelow (PUS, FCO) and informed him that some time ago, Mountbatten had mentioned to Nehru that he would be attending the coronation event of the King of Nepal in February 1975 with Prince Charles and ‘intended to pay a visit to India thereafter’. Mountbatten had added that Prince Charles was ‘most enthusiastic’ and it was subsequently confirmed to Nehru that ‘the Queen was agreeable to such a visit’. He had accordingly obtained the authority from New Delhi to issue an invitation, which was ‘delivered last Saturday’.143 Much of this was news to Brimelow, who only knew that the Prince of Wales was to represent the Queen in Nepal at Birendra Bir Bikram Shah’s coronation in February 1975. Consequently, on 1 November 1974, the Protocol & Conference Department asked ‘for the views of [different sections] on . . . our attitude about a visit to India, bearing in mind the extent to which the idea has been given publicity and the GoI involved (no doubt by Lord Mountbatten)’. The note added that ‘ideally the HRH should [not] visit India under the wing of Lord Mountbatten who though his junior in rank, is an older man and a great figure [there] and might . . . put him in the shade’.144 Another note continued that the Protocol & Conference Department had earlier enquired if the Prince of Wales ‘might be amenable to visit Saudi Arabia on the way back from Nepal’. They were told that ‘his commitments at the Royal Naval College would prevent’ this. On the other hand, Mountbatten, who was ‘going privately to Nepal’, had been telling the British Ambassador there, apart from the Indian High-Commissioner here, that he ‘and Prince Charles [were] going to India after Nepal’. Meanwhile, New Delhi’s invitation to the Prince of Wales and Nehru’s intimation to Brimelow that ‘he understood that the visit had been CONTEMPORARY BRITISH HISTORY 17 approved by the Queen (which it was not)’, had complicated matters. Now, the Prince of Wales’ secretary had written to say that ‘Lord Mountbatten has revived the idea of a visit to India with Prince Charles, who seems keen, if both the FCO and MOD (Navy) see no objection’. The crux of the matter was this: should ‘the HRH go to Saudi Arabia (which does not expect him) instead of India (which now apparently does) . . . with FCO blessing?’145 Next, the position of the British High-Commissioner in New Delhi was sought. Sir Michael Walker welcomed the proposed visit but with the following conditions that

. . . we were not to get into difficulties with the Indians over their nuclear explosion [and] the programme would be organised to emphasise the British contribution to economic and social developments [here] . . . In the way that the invitation has come about, the programme for the Prince is more likely to be an extension of that which [Lord Mountbatten] wishes . . . 146

With the review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty due in May 1975 and with India having successfully exploded a nuclear test in May 1974,147 the FCO considered it ‘optimistic that there would [be] no further alarm . . . [even] a further Indian nuclear explosion’. They saw ‘little value . . . from an official visit by Princes Charles at this particular time and quite a few snags . . . ’ Indeed, Foreign Secretary James Callaghan had conveyed to B.K. Nehru, among other matters, Pakistan’s ‘great concern at India’s nuclear explosion’.148 Callaghan was worried enough to suggest that ‘the Queen [be made] aware of the foreign policy considerations [and] hoped that [she] would agree that . . . Prince Charles’ naval duties should take precedence’. This was so because he was equally concerned that ‘Lord Mountbatten should not be able to represent to the press that the wicked government was frustrating the wishes of the Queen’.149 From New Delhi, Walker was reiterating his hope that ‘official talks [on India’s nuclear explosion would not be] mixed up with this visit’.150 However, in December 1974, the Indian press announced the upcoming arrival in Delhi of Prince Charles for a two-day visit in February, arranged in consultation with Mountbatten and Nehru, on his way to Nepal. He was even reported as likely to pay a longer visit later.151 In the event, the visit took place over 20–22 February 1975 and went well. Prince Charles and Mountbatten were received at the airport by the Vice-President of India. They ‘lunched with Prime Minister and dined with the President’. Staying at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Mountbatten led Charles on a tour around it ‘from the kitchen to the turret’, to the constraint of Indian officials and chagrin of their British counterparts. The ‘prospect of such an inspection from a former tenant’ caused the staffs of Rashtrapati Bhavan and British High-Commission alike ‘some concern’ but the beleaguered GoI, beset with mounting domestic difficulties, needed a spectacle and made it clear that ‘nothing which would please Charles and Mountbatten was too much trouble’. With little going their way politically, given the then-climaxing JP movement against Gandhi,152 her officials, ministers and party men, especially the ‘old-hands’ from 1947, took momentary refuge in nostalgia as Mountbatten ‘reconstructed the history of independence’, whose ‘memory . . . and of people who took part in them still meant [so much] to him’. Thereafter, the Prince of Wales laid a wreath at Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial Raj Ghat, toured the Red Fort and the Old Fort and cruised around the Connaught Circus. Time was even found for the Prince to play an exhibition game of polo and after a reception at the High- Commission, the party left for Nepal. Press coverage was ‘unusually full and entirely 18 R. ANKIT favourable’ and Walker was pleased to report that ‘it concentrated upon HRH [with] many friendly references for Lord Mountbatten’.153 The FCO’s concern that Charles would be overshadowed by Mountbatten in India was partly because of the former’s status as the next head of the Commonwealth and his persona on the trip thus reflected upon the prestige of this institution. However, over July–August 1975, their proposed longer visit, due from 24 October to 4 November 1975,154 was postponed, from the British side ‘in the desire to prevent any deterioration in relations’, given the imposition of Emergency by Indira Gandhi in June.155 To B.K. Nehru, ‘it was unfortunate . . . as an expression of disapproval’,156 and Mountbatten was still capable of filling in a personal frame and letting the FCO know that the back­ ground to this attitude of Nehru’s was that he was ‘terrified’ that Gandhi would ‘recall him’. Nehru had told Mountbatten that he had ‘heard a rumour that Callaghan had advised Prince Charles to not go’ and added, a touch dramatically that ‘Prince Charles would never be welcome in India’. When he expressed the hope that at least Mountbatten ‘would go on his own’, Mountbatten admitted that ‘he did not wish to go when the Indian government were behaving so badly to the Maharani of Jaipur [under arrest] and others of his friends’. He left Nehru in little doubt about the ‘bad effect, which had been caused by the expulsion of British journalists’ from India, as the freedom of press was suspended.157 Callaghan was not impressed. That Nehru had chosen to telephone Mountbatten and not come to the FCO did not look good. That Mountbatten had not ‘kept quiet [nor] told Nehru [to] ask the FCO’ was worse. As a result, their ‘carefully laid plans [emphasising Prince Charles’ naval duties had] gone awry’.158 Ironically, it was Mountbatten who eventually drafted the telegram on behalf of Prince Charles that was sent on 3 September 1975 to India, citing service duties and invoking Mountbatten’s hopes to accompany Charles in future.159 In New Delhi, Michael Walker mused that ‘taking the state of opinion in Britain and everything else into account, there was really no alternative’. Indians could be ‘sensitive’ but as the government censor was ‘instructed not to allow stories about the postponement’, there was ‘no adverse publicity’!160 The other side-show in the lead-up to the Indian Emergency that Mountbatten tried to involve himself in was India’s take-over of the former princely state of Sikkim in 1975.161 Mountbatten took the line that Sikkim had been a ‘British protectorate since 1861ʹ and it was this special relationship that the GoI took over ‘under the Indo-Sikkim Treaty of 1950ʹ. London’s line was that it had ‘no standing to intervene’ especially as New Delhi’s stand echoed that of Mountbatten’s, i.e. ‘events in Sikkim [were] their internal affairs’. The American Government took a similar position and this was conveyed to Mountbatten by Brimelow in November 1974.162 In late-1974 and early-1975, as the Chogyal (ruler) and his supporters in Sikkim started to be suppressed by India, they reached out to the international community. The South Asia Department of the FCO concluded that ‘the less successful the Chogyal and his supporters are internally, the more they will step up their campaign internationally. But, they will [not] findmuch active support and [SAD was] inclined to agree with the Indians—that it would be in their own best interests to come along quietly’.163 Once the Emergency was proclaimed in June 1975, Mountbatten was reduced to writing to old associates like Nawab Ali Yavar Jung (Governor, Maharashtra) that there was a ‘paramount need to lift censorship . . . the one barrier the true friends of India have to contend with’.164 He was being restrained from pleading for old friends like Gayatri CONTEMPORARY BRITISH HISTORY 19

Devi (Maharani of Jaipur). On 6 August 1975, he had asked for advice from the British High-Commission as he was ‘seriously thinking of writing to [Gandhi] about [her] on the grounds that the Jaipur family have been friends for so long, asking whether she would consider granting bail’. The High-Commission, expectedly, discouraged him that ‘it would do no good’ and suggested that he spoke with Nehru. With the FCO, it shared its doubts ‘whether this will satisfy him . . . he will only collect a rebuff . . . pressure from Mountbatten may simply strengthen the Lady’s determination to keep [her] locked’.165 What stayed Mountbatten’s hands was Gayatri Devi’s son Jagat Singh ringing him up ‘to say that . . . it would be better’ that Mountbatten did not write on behalf of his mother, as ‘it might annoy Mrs Gandhi and make her take away some of the privileges she has in prison’. So, he wrote to High-Commissioner Walker instead, fuming that Gayatri Devi ‘should never have been arrested’ and fretting about ‘anything I can do’.166 In reply, Walker (relieved that Mountbatten had not written to Gandhi) informed him that Gayatri Devi was ‘being reasonably well-looked after, is able to receive visits and [there are] rumours of her being released’. Supporting Jagat Singh’s judgement, Walker cautioned that ‘while he did not know for sure, she may have been arrested because of ‘infringement of foreign exchange regulation’ and reminded him that ‘this was also Mrs Pandit’s advice’.167 Thwarted in India, Mountbatten turned towards the other domain he considered himself intimately linked with: the British Royal Family. Prompted by Mountbatten, the Queen asked the Prime Minister about Gayatri Devi’s case. A peeved FCO prepared a backgrounder for Wilson, which after ascertaining that Mountbatten was ‘clearly the source of the Royal Family’s knowledge’, made clear the official position thus:

We have no standing to intervene in an internal affair of the Indian government concerning an Indian citizen. An informal initiative by a member of the Royal Family would be unlikely to do any good . . . The best course is to wait for circumstances in which some kind of intervention (if Lord Mountbatten still wanted to do something) would have more hope of success . . . 168

The note also added some details of the case. Gayatri Devi was arrested on 30 July 1975 for violating ‘conservation of foreign exchange and prevention of smuggling act’, when gold and jewels worth GBP 7 ½ million were found in her Jaipur Palace. With their ‘de- recognition’, princely families were now ‘within the scope of legislation designed to stamp out hoarding of gold and tax evasion’. This technicality apart, there was party politics involved, as Gayatri Devi had been an opposition MP, representing the Swatantra Party, in the lower house of parliament since 1962. Her husband, the Maharaja, had died in 1970 while playing polo in Britain and the Jaipur family had ‘links with the British royal family’, thus prompting Mountbatten’s gambit, which was also made possible by his direct line of communication with the Queen and Prince Philip, his nephew, and deep consciousness of the royals’ presence, important but ill-defined and thus at the mercy of precedent, at the heart of the Commonwealth. Of course, all this was unmistakably happening against and because of the backdrop of the Indian Emergency, which the Indian High-Commissioner in London was defending unconvincingly thus: ‘failure to enforce the law for years had caused conditions to deteriorate to . . . chaos which was checked by the Emergency’.169 Mountbatten got to speak his mind to Indira Gandhi during and about the Emergency, when a private trip of his to Mauritius coincided with her official visit there in 20 R. ANKIT

October 1976. Both attended the opening of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute and in a ‘short, private meeting’ alongside, Mountbatten spoke ‘frankly to Mrs Gandhi about the need to improve her image . . . by allowing greater freedom of the press’ and warned that ‘unless things took a turn for the better before next year’s Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Meeting, she was likely to have a frosty reception in England’.170 This did not come to pass, as she was out of office sooner than anyone had anticipated. In January 1977, she announced that general elections would take place in March and with this resumption of democracy in India, the Indian President pointedly noted to the then-Head of Mission of the British High-Commission that ‘our two countries had so much in common that it was not really sensible to criticise each other’.171 Perhaps in that spirit, when the Larry Collins/Dominique Lapierre blockbuster Freedom at Midnight was pub­ lished during the Emergency, with Mountbatten given top-billing, it ‘got plenty of space in the Indian press’ and, while there were isolated calls ‘demanding an Indian riposte’ to many a residual Mountbatten ‘revelation . . . wounding Indian amour propre’ about the events of 1947, nothing much came of it.172 Indira Gandhi wrote to Mountbatten only once in those 19 months of the Emergency, in February 1977. The nature of this communication, too, was more personal and less political. Writing amidst ‘the election campaign [and] travelling a great deal’, she reflected that Vijayalakshmi Pandit, her aunt had ‘never been favourably inclined’ towards her but it was ‘sad that she should have joined openly with those who were most virulently and viciously against my father’.173 In what was almost her last letter to him, this was a reference to Pandit campaigning for the opposition in an election that saw a ‘revolutionary change . . . a meaningful exercise in re-orientation’ in ushering the first non-Congress government in independent India headed by Morarji Desai174; Gandhi’s deputy in 1966 and an ex-Congressman since 1969. Mountbatten was on the official guest list for Desai’s banquet dinner during his visit to Britain in June 1978 and found himself seated next to violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin.175 A year later, Vijayalakshmi Pandit—born in the same year as Mountbatten, 1900—and his last-remaining friend in India sketched the political scene for him, 20 days before he was assassinated:

We are going through a distressing time. . . . People were getting discontented and Morarji [Desai] has had to step down . . . Our new PM, Charan Singh, can only last with . . . the help of the Lady [for] whom he had during these past two years call[ed] for a “Nuremberg type trial” . . . He now woos [Indira] and she is making this an opportunity of a comeback . . . That she will return to full power seems entirely possible.176

Conclusion Five months from this letter, Indira Gandhi returned to office by a landslide victory in the general elections of January 1980. By then, Mountbatten was dead; assassinated on 27 August 1979, in a bombing incident for which the IRA took responsibility. His funeral at Westminster Abbey on 5 September saw a considerable Indian presence. An Indian Memorial Service was conducted the same day, in which messages from many state legislatures were read. The Gazette of India had brought out an extraordinary obituary notice a day earlier and an India League condolence meeting took place two days later. The All-India Radio had broadcasted a 15-minute tribute on 28 August itself, with CONTEMPORARY BRITISH HISTORY 21 a message from Gandhi, and the state-run television channel followed with a 30-minute broadcast entitled ‘Tribute to Lord Mountbatten’, led by Prime Minister Charan Singh and including Gandhi and others.177 In his death, like in life, Mountbatten remained a ‘friend of India’ but not so for the FCO. It had looked, ‘at one stage, as if the Pakistanis were going to be excluded altogether’ from the ceremonies in London. In view of the ‘massive Indian representation, that would have looked gratuitously offensive’ and the FCO scrambled ‘to ensure with the Lord Chamberlain’s office that [Pakistan’s Defence Attaché] Brigadier Khan was invited to the Abbey’. A week later, a relieved FCO was assuring the British Embassy in Islamabad that they ‘have had no comments’ on this disparity. After all, as it added, ‘those who understand the background will not complain’.178 Considering the extent and array of Mountbatten’s continuing involvement with India, not only after his departure from there in 1948 but, as this article tries to show, after Nehru’s death in 1964, it has gone under-remarked. As this slice-of-life account of his later life has shown, Mountbatten remained typically mixed up in various ways and on diverse issues in an example of slowly fading but not outrightly vanishing contours of lasting colonial afterlife in post-colonial states. Except, increasingly and unlike Nehru’s time, it was neither entirely appreciated nor sought-after by both sides of the Indo-British inter- governmental relations. Indeed, in this period, more than the merely wary Indians, their British official counterparts were rather mistrustful of Mountbatten’s propensities. From the India–Pakistan war of 1965 to the Privy Purses imbroglio over 1967–71, from arms procurement in the mid-1960s to the BBC’s travails in the early-1970s, and in seeking to intervene before and during the Emergency on behalf of the British royal family as well as the Indian princes, within the framework of Indo-British relations, Mountbatten enjoyed access and attempted its use with the ‘official mind’ in London and New Delhi alike. Mountbatten’s much-remarked legendary, if exaggerated, ability ‘to communicate, per­ suade and charm’,179 reached their limit in Indian affairs in the 10 years from the late- 1960s to the late-1970s as he stood out as a remaining relic of empire in post-imperial institutional exchanges. He was either heard but not listened to or he was altogether held back from holding forth, seen as an inconvenience, even a hindrance. He continued relentlessly (if not entirely regardless) to offer his views politically as well as to shrewdly frame history-writing and its pertinence or relevance is a matter of analysis and emphasis, that it was there cannot be denied. His historical and increasingly ‘informal’ influence outlasted his ‘friendship’ with Nehru, for he had more Indian friends than one albeit none as influential as the first Indian Prime Minister. More than anybody else and longer than everybody else, Mountbatten symbolised the lingering colonial legacies, which continued to impact upon Indo-British relations deep into the decades of the New Commonwealth.

Notes

1. 1 June 1964, Brockman to Menon, MB1/J285, Mountbatten (MB) Papers, Hartley Library (University of Southampton). 2. 12 June 1964, Belcher to Mountbatten, MB1/J402. 3. See Ankit, “Between Vanity and Sensitiveness.” 4. See McGarr, “After Nehru, What?” 5. 10 June 1964, Menon to Brockman, MB1/J285. 6. 26 June 1964, Brockman to Menon, MB1/J285. 7. See Kumarasingham, “The Tropical Dominions”; and A Political Legacy of the British Empire. 22 R. ANKIT

8. See Ziegler, Mountbatten: The Official Biography. 9. See Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten; Menon, The Transfer of Power in India; and Collins and Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight, Mountbatten and the Partition of India and Mountbatten and Independent India. 10. See Mosley, Last Days of the Raj; Moon, Divide and Quit; Sherwani, The Partition of India and Mountbatten;, Roberts, Eminent Churchillians; and Wolpert, Shameful Flight. 11. Brecher, Nehru: A Political Biography, 570; and Brown, Nehru: A Political Life, 249, 253, 279. 12. See Tan and Kudaisya, The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia, 9–19. For discussions of Partition historiography see Talbot and Singh, The Partition of India, 7–24; and Virdee, From the Ashes of 1947, 2–19. For recent representative works on Partition see Zamindar, The Long Partition; and Sen, Citizen Refugee. 13. See Copland, “Lord Mountbatten and the integration of the Indian states”; Chester, Borders and Conflict in South Asia; and Ankit, “Mountbatten, Auchinleck and the end of British Indian Army.”. 14. See Moore, “Mountbatten, India, and the Commonwealth” and Making the New Commonwealth; Guha, India After Gandhi; and Murphy, The Empire’s New Clothes. 15. See Raghavan, War and Peace in Modern India; and Ankit, The Kashmir Conflict. 16. See Singh, The Limits of British Influence. 17. See Ankit, The Kashmir Conflict, 164–202; and Gupta and Lüthi, eds., The Sino-Indian War of 1962. 18. See McGarr, The Cold War in South Asia, 216–243. 19. See Colman, “Britain and the Indo-Pakistani Conflict.” 20. See McGarr, The Cold War in South Asia, 119–148. 21. See Hangen, After Nehru Who?; and McGarr, “After Nehru, What?” 22. See Madsen, “The Long Goodbye.” 23. See Ankit, “Mountbatten and India, 1948–64.” 24. See Taylor, Empress: Queen Victoria and India. 25. See McGarr, “‘The Viceroys are Disappearing from the Roundabouts in Delhi.”’ 26. See Ashton, “Mountbatten, the Royal Family, and British Influence.” 27. See Murphy, “By Invitation Only.” 28. See Lloyd, Diplomacy with a Difference. 29. 9 July 1964, Menon to Brockman, MB1/J285. 30. 12 June 1964, Garner to Mountbatten, MB1/J179. 31. 13 September 1964, Pandit to Mountbatten, MB1/J325, Folder 2. 32. 23 December 1964, Pandit to Mountbatten, MB1/J325, Folder 2. 33. See Ankit, The Kashmir Conflict, 40–74. 34. See note 29 above. 35. See Guha, “Opening a Window in Kashmir”; and Ankit, “Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah of Kashmir, 1965–75.” 36. 10 June 1964, Menon to Brockman and 10 July 1964, Gore-Booth to Mountbatten, MB1/J285. 37. 24 July 1964, Brockman to Menon was a copy of 24 June 1964, Gore-Booth to Mountbatten, in response to 16 April 1964, Mountbatten to Gore-Booth, based on Menon’s letter to Mountbatten. MB1/J285. 38. See Chaudhuri, “The Making of an “All Weather Friendship”.” 39. See Chaudhuri, “‘Just another border incident’.” 40. See Nawaz, Crossed Swords; Bajwa, From Kutch to Tashkent; Chaudhuri, “Indian “Strategic Restraint” Revisited”; and Tarapore, “Defence without deterrence.” 41. See Roy, “Assuaging Cold War Anxieties”; and Dimitrakis, “British Diplomacy and the Decline of CENTO.” 42. 22 April 1965, Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) to PM on ‘UK defence and aid policy, 1965ʹ, FO 371/180,970, The National Archives (Kew). 43. 7 April 1965, Mountbatten to Healey, MB1/J236. 44. See Small, The China-Pakistan Axis. 45. 16 September 1965, Trend to Garner, FO 371/180,964. CONTEMPORARY BRITISH HISTORY 23

46. 1 December 1965, Mountbatten to Chaudhuri, MB1/K147. 47. 5 December 1965, Mountbatten to Cariappa, MB1/K147. 48. 12 January 1966, Mountbatten to Chaudhuri, MB1/K146. 49. 14 June 1967, Haksar to Sahay, Subject File Serial No. 113, Haksar Papers (III Instalment), Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), New Delhi. 50. Quoted in Ramesh, Intertwined Lives, 76. 51. Ibid, 77. 52. 14 August 1968, O’ Leary to Hunt, FCO 37/101. 53. For details, see FCO 37/437-439. 54. See Hansard HC Deb 22 July 1969 Vol. 787 CC 1485–7. 55. See FCO 37/1793. 56. See Waseem, “Unscrambling of the British Empire.” 57. See Smith, “Mountbatten Goes to the Movies”; and Coll, “Autobiography and History on Screen.” 58. 2 January 1962, CRO to Belcher, DO 133/160. 59. For a review of the ‘146 days of Mountbatten’s Viceroyalty’ see Wood, “Dividing the Jewel.” 60. 14 September 1970, FCO 37/643. 61. See Mitchell, Sampson and Woolgar, A summary catalogue of the papers of Earl Mountbatten of Burma. 62. Ashton, “Mountbatten, the Royal Family, and British Influence,” 75. 63. See Ananth, The Indian Constitution and Social Revolution. 64. See Dhabhai, “Paramount State and the “Princely Subject”.” 65. See Copland, The Princes of India. 66. 3 August 1967, Hunt’s note, FCO 37/44. 67. 25 July 1967, Allinson to Garner, FCO 37/44. 68. See Robins, ‘Votes, seats, and the critical Indian election of 1967ʹ. 69. 27 July 1967, T. No. 1657, Garner to Freeman, FCO 37/44. 70. 28 July 1967, Mountbatten to Freeman, FCO 37/44. 71. 26 July 1967, CRO to British HC (New Delhi), FCO 37/44. 72. 28 July 1967, Mountbatten to Garner, FCO 37/44. 73. 28 April 1967, Mountbatten to Gandhi, MB1/K215. 74. 25 October 1967, Pandit to Mountbatten, MB1/K215. 75. 31 July 1967, T. No. 1646, Freeman to Garner, FCO 37/44. 76. 1 August 1967, Mountbatten to Gandhi, Maharajas of Jaipur and Bikaner, FCO 37/44. 77. 13 July and 29 July 1967, Maharaja of Bikaner and Maharao of Kutch to Mountbatten, FCO 37/ 44. 78. 4 August 1967, Hunt to Freeman, FCO 37/44. 79. 7 August 1967, Garner to Freeman, FCO 37/44. 80. 8 August 1967, Waterfield (New Delhi) to MacInnes (London), FCO 37/45. 81. 10 August 1967, T. No. 1725, Freeman to Garner, FCO 37/45. 82. 14 August 1967, T. No. 1781, Garner to Freeman, FCO 37/45. 83. 16 August 1947, T. No. 1748, Freemen to Garner, FCO 37/45. 84. 13 August 1967, Strong (New Delhi) to CRO, FCO 37/45. 85. 15 August 1967, Hunt to Brimelow and 17 August 1967, Brimelow to Mountbatten, FCO 37/ 45. 86. 18 August 1967, Atkinson’s note (SAD), FCO 37/45. 87. 18 August 1967, Freeman to Garner, FCO 37/45. 88. 29 August 1967, Garner to Freeman, FCO 37/45. 89. 1 September 1967, British HC (New Delhi) to SAD, FCO 37/45. 90. 26 August 1967, Singh to Freeman, FCO 37/45. 91. 30 August 1967, Singh to Freeman, FCO 37/45. 92. 4 September 1967, Freeman to Singh, FCO 37/45. 93. 25 August 1967, Mountbatten to Pandit, MB1/K147. 94. 19 July 1968, Solesby’s note, FCO 37/45. 24 R. ANKIT

95. Ashton, “Mountbatten, the Royal Family, and British Influence,” 78. 96. See Erdman, The Swatantra Party. 97. 8 November 1968, Mountbatten to Rajagopalachari, FCO 37/364. 98. 11 November 1968, Rajagopalachari to Mountbatten, 17 November 1968, Mountbatten to Rajagopalachari and 21 November 1968, Rajagopalachari to Mountbatten, FCO 37/364. 99. 27 November 1968, Mountbatten to Paul Gore-Booth, FCO 37/364. 100. 10 December 1968, T. No. 2350, James to Gore-Booth, FCO 37/364. 101. 23 December 1968, Gore-Booth to Mountbatten, FCO 37/364. 102. See FCO 37/373. 103. See FCO 37/361. 104. 30 May 1969, O’Leary’s note, FCO 37/364. 105. 7 January 1969, James to Gore-Booth, FCO 37/364. 106. 7 January 1969, T. No. 28, FCO to New Delhi, FCO 37/364. 107. See FCO 37/377. 108. See FCO 37/400. 109. See note 104 above. 110. See note 95 above. 111. See Guha, India after Gandhi, 416–444. 112. See FCO 37/1184. 113. 8 September 1970, Singh to Mountbatten, FCO 37/599. 114. 10 September 1970, Mountbatten to Greenhill, FCO 37/599. 115. See Phillips, Immigration Act 1971. 116. 14 September 1970, Birch’s note, FCO 37/599. 117. 18 September 1970, Sutherland’s note, FCO 37/599. 118. 22 March 1971, Mountbatten to Gandhi, MB1/K146. 119. 22 April 1971, Mountbatten to Singh, MB1/K26. 120. 2 February 1972, Gandhi to Mountbatten, MB1/K146. 121. See Raghavan, 1971. 122. See Malhotra, Indira Gandhi. 123. 26 April 1972, Gandhi to Mountbatten, MB1/K146. 124. www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/100-voices/people-nation-empire/bbc-in-India 125. Ashton, “Mountbatten, the Royal Family, and British Influence,” 79. 126. 7 October 1970, Stephenson to Mountbatten, FCO 37/640. 127. 14 October 1970, Mountbatten to Stephenson, FCO 37/640. 128. 14 October 1970, Mountbatten to James, FCO 37/640. 129. 23 October 1970, James to Sutherland (SAD), FCO 37/640. 130. See DO 133/223; also, Debnath, ‘British perceptions of the East Pakistan Crisis 1971ʹ. 131. See FCO 37/827. 132. See Roy, “Military Loyalty in the Colonial Context.” 133. 6 June 1973, Mountbatten to British HC (New Delhi), FCO 37/1290. 134. See Wood, “Extra-Parliamentary Opposition in India.” 135. See Sundaram, “A Paper Tiger.” 136. See Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent. 137. 14 June 1973, British HC (New Delhi) to Mountbatten, FCO 37/1290. 138. 27 October 1973, No. HC/78/73, Nehru to Singh, B.K. Nehru Papers, Subject File Serial No. 26, NMML. 139. See Datta, “The repatriation of 1973ʹ and Bass, ‘Bargaining Away Justice.” 140. 17 July 1973, Mountbatten to Haksar, Haksar Papers (I&II Instalments), Correspondences, NMML. 141. See MB1/K215. 142. See note 26 above. 143. 30 October 1974, Nehru-Brimelow meeting, FCO 37/1464. 144. 1 November 1974, Curle’s note, FCO 37/1482. 145. 1 November 1974, Curle’s note, FCO 37/1482. CONTEMPORARY BRITISH HISTORY 25

146. 4 November 1974, Chalmer’s note, FCO 37/1482. 147. See Sarkar, “India’s Nuclear Limbo.” 148. 11 June 1974, Nehru to New Delhi, B.K. Nehru Papers, Subject File Serial No. 26, NMML. 149. 7 November 1974, Maddock to Curle, FCO 37/1482. 150. 20 November 1974, Walker to Wilford, FCO 37/1606. 151. See FCO 37/1461 and FCO 37/1482. 152. Guha, India after Gandhi, 467–493. 153. 3 March 1975, Walker to Brimelow, FCO 37/1636. 154. See FCO 37/1611. 155. See Prakash, Emergency Chronicles. 156. 10 September 1975, T. No. 675, FCO to British HC (New Delhi), FCO 37/1636. 157. See Sorabjee, The Emergency, Censorship and the Press in India. 158. 11 September 1975, O’ Neill (SAD) to Walker (HC, New Delhi), FCO 37/1636. 159. See FCO 37/1635. 160. 15 September 1975, Walker to Mountbatten, FCO 37/1595. 161. For a critical treatment, see Datta-Ray, Smash and Grab. 162. 1 and 13 November 1974, Mountbatten-Brimelow correspondence, FCO 37/1534. 163. 16 January 1975, Deas to Stitt (New Delhi), FCO 37/1672. 164. 14 February 1976, Mountbatten to Jung, MB1/K146. 165. 20 August, Forster (New Delhi) to Mountbatten and 27 August 1975, Forster to Male, FCO 37/ 1593. 166. 5 September 1975, Mountbatten to Walker, FCO 37/1595. 167. See note 160 above. 168. 16 September 1975, O’ Neill’s note, FCO 37/1594. 169. 8 June 1977, T. No. 427, Nehru to Bhandari, B.K. Nehru Papers, Subject File Serial No. 41, NMML. 170. 21 October 1976, Brind (British HC, Mauritius) to O’ Neill (SAD), FCO 37/1729. 171. 26 January 1977, Thomson to O’Neill, FCO 37/1934. 172. 2 December 1975, British HC (New Delhi) to London, FCO 37/1614. 173. 24 February 1977, Gandhi to Mountbatten, MB1/K146. 174. 4 May 1977, Desai to Mountbatten, MB1/K146. 175. See FCO 37/2094. 176. 7 August 1979, Pandit to Mountbatten, MB1/K214. 177. See FCO 37/2174. 178. 12 September 1979, White (SAD) to Forster (British Embassy, Islamabad), FCO 37/2197. 179. Ashton, “Mountbatten, the Royal Family, and British Influence,” 88.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the reviewers and editors for their thoughtful observations and patient support. I am grateful to Professors Ian Talbot, Chris Woolgar and Adrian Smith for their supervision, guidance and conversations, since 2011, on the Mountbatten papers at the Special Collections, University of Southampton.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Rakesh Ankit is lecturer in history and international politics at Loughborough University. 26 R. ANKIT

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