Grandpa’s Story – Part XI

Last week:  Grandpa told us about the Japanese threat to India during World War II, and how it was customary to send your children to boarding school in England. 

Me     I’m a little rusty on my history, Daddy, here.  The British leaving India came at the same time.  How does that all work in with Partition?

• Wavell as Viceroy of India (centre), with the C-in-C of the Indian Army Auchinleck (right) and Montgomery.

G       This is what happened.  Wavell became Viceroy for a time.  (Viscount Wavell 1943-1947) He was taken over by Mountbatten and Mountbatten said Partition would take place in 60 or 70 days.  I’m told he had a notice in his office that said “59 days to Partition” the next day “58 days”, otherwise they would be arguing about what was going to happen which would have gone on for months and would have led to fighting. 

Me     Whose choice was it to have Partition?  The Indians’ choice? 

G       No.  This was accepted by the British government as a means of settling the problem.  The Muslims were demanding their own country.  Jinna was the Muslim leader at the time and he wouldn’t accept any agreement at all for joint ownership of the country and insisted on a separate country for Pakistan.           

Nehru (Prime Minister of India) accepted this decision.  To begin with there was a lot of trouble.  The Hindus, who were in what is now Pakistan, were coming to India and this is where the Sikh trouble started.  They stopped trains by blocking the rails and they murdered all the passengers. 

Me     Who did?  The Sikhs?                         

G       The Pakistanis murdered the Hindus and the Hindus murdered the Pakistanis.  There were thousands killed and this was never really reported.          

As I was saying, the man from whom I took over told me that there were gangs of Hindus in Delhi going around looking for Muslims and killing them and for several days there were dead bodies lying about the streets.          

Shortly after I arrived, I went out to tea and there was a man there who had been in New Delhi not far from where we lived.  The place had a flat roof.  He employed Muslim servants – a lot of the Europeans employed Muslim servants in north India.  All his servants and their families slept and lived on his roof so that he could protect them.  All this trouble was between the Hindus and the Muslims.  Nobody attacked the Europeans.  We were never in fear of our lives.          

Some time before Partition, when I was in Madras, they suspected there might be a rising.  The police came to all the Europeans in Madras to find out who had motor cars.  My office in Perambur was to be a collecting point.  When the trouble arose, notice would be given and those who had cars had to collect the Europeans at my office, and they would go and provide guard to a temporary camp about 10 miles outside Madras.  But this actually never happened.  There was some trouble in Madras but nothing of a very serious nature, not like they had in north India. 

Me     Now, you’ve got West Pakistan and East Pakistan. 

G       Yes. 

Me     Which was the biggest trouble spot? 

G       There was trouble in both places but in India they’d cut the rail communication to East Pakistan and had to build another stretch of line.  I forget how many miles but it was an appreciable distance in order to join up with the Indian Railway system.          

What was also happening was that because of the divide, the workshops were not able to supply certain areas.  The people in Pakistan were taking the wheels off and putting condemned wheels on to the wagons to come back to India.  Then the passenger trains would go from Delhi to Lahore (West Pakistan) and they’d pinch all the mirrors and the washbasins.  After two or three weeks of this, all rail communication between West Pakistan and India was cut off too.          

I went as a representative of the Indian Railways to Lahore to discuss with the railway people in Pakistan how we could come to an agreement to overcome all this and to provide a solution to keeping the trains running.  I was the only European among Indians who’d mostly been educated at English universities.  Some of the Indians and Pakistanis had been to the same university together and had been friends.  We came to an agreement as to how we should put our proposals to the Indian Railway Board.  The outcome was that they said they couldn’t trust the Pakistanis to hold to this agreement.  I suppose it was the same on the other side, so all the rail communications between India and Pakistan were cut off. 

Me     And that lasted for? 

G       Oh, that lasted for several months.  Partition was in about August 1947 and I went to Delhi in April 1948 so this was very much in the memory of the people.  (Grandpa’s clock has just struck 12.)            

All the Europeans were given the option of retiring.  Normally you had to serve 25 years before you earned a gratuity and you had a provident fund which you got on retirement which you couldn’t get unless you’d done so many years service, but they cut out all this and whatever service you’d done, you got your gratuity proportionally for the time you served.  A very large number of the Europeans on the Railways and in the offices retired at that time.  But I stayed on after Partition for another seven or eight years.  When I left I was the only European on the Railway Board in Delhi. 

Me     At this stage Nehru was Prime Minister, wasn’t he? 

• A tryst with destiny’ … Jawaharlal Nehru 

G       Nehru was Prime Minister. 

Me     How many people in the government were Indians and how many English at the time? 

G       Before Partition? 

Me     Yes. 

G       It was a British Government with the Viceroy there.  There was no Prime Minister.  There was the Viceroy and the British government who controlled the whole of India. 

Me     All British? 

G       There were some Indians. On the Railways, for instance, which was part of the government.  I was recruited on to the Indian Railways in 1925.  Some more British came out in 1926 but after that all recruitment was by Indians so by the time Partition came, there was a very large number of Indians and they were very competent.  When I was on the Railway Board I was dealing with them every day.  There was no question on the railways that there was incompetence, but within a few months of Partition there were strikes and all sorts of thing.  I used to say “Now the Railways belong to you, and now you are going on strike against your own countrymen”. 

Me     How long did it take, then, for the Indian government to become totally Indian and for the British to disappear altogether? 

G       They took over straightaway.  Most of the British were older and reaching retirement age which in India was 55.  You could go on leave at the age of 53 on two years leave on half pay.  There were very competent Indians in the Civil Service.  Most of them had Cambridge or Oxford or similar qualifications.  What it meant was that the men who left were in the senior category and the younger ones got rapid promotion.          

There was naturally a certain amount of disruption, but there was nothing noticeable in the running of the country. 

Me     When was New Delhi built?

G       It was built, I rather imagine, in the first part of this century, probably after the First World War. 

Me     Why was New Delhi built when Old Delhi was there already? 

G       Old Delhi was very ancient.  There were a lot of very ancient buildings.  There was the Red Fort, that was in 1700.  At one time Calcutta used to be the capital of India.  Then they decided to make New Delhi the capital so when that happened I suppose they decided they would have to build.  The whole of New Delhi was built with all the government offices and parliament. The north and south Secretariat buildings in New Delhi, part of the planned city built during British rule, house many of India’s government offices.  

Me     It was built by the British? 

• The Secretariat buildings in New Delhi, part of the planned city built during British rule, house many of India’s government offices.

G       Yes.  I forget the name of the man but he was a very well-known architect .  (New Delhi is about seven miles from old Delhi and was built by Edward Lutyens between 1911 and 1931– ed.)          

The bungalows we lived in were in New Delhi.  They were planned so that they could get water from the river which was supplied to all these bungalows.  Throughout the hot weather the PWD (Public Works Department) used to come and flood your lawn once a week.  They’d flood it to about two inches.  The whole of the ground outside Delhi was burnt brown with the hot sun, and the bungalows, which in the early days used to be the European bungalows, but now Indians as well, had this little green patch which attracted all the birds.  You had lovely birds all the year round. 

Me     I can remember masses of Hoopoes. 

G       Yes 

Me     I came out when I was 15 and I remember the bungalow very well.  The club life there, was it similar to what it was in Madras?  Was it as social?  I know I spent a lot of time at the club playing tennis and swimming. 

• Judy in front of the house in New Delhi, setting off to play tennis

G       Yes.  It was just the same. 

Me     But Indians were also allowed there. 

G       Yes.  Before Partition, the committee of the Delhi Gymkhana Club , which was THE club of New Delhi, where most of the members were senior officers in the government, were nearly all British.  Within twelve months of Partition the whole of the committee was Indian except for one European.  But the club went on just the same.  You were there. 

Me     There was no apartheid. 

G       No.  Nothing like that at all. 

Me     In fact my best friend was Achla.  You remember Achla Chib? 

G       Yes.         

Me     She’s in England now. 

Next week:  Grandpa tells us about the ‘Animow’, and what happened to the Maharajahs after Indian Independence.