‘Mountbatten redrafted plan for Nehru’

“… my father began soul-searching and decided to show Nehru the Mountbatten Plan to get his feedback. Nehru was incandescent and kept Krishna Menon up till dawn the night that he arrived, dictating the bombshell letter dated the 11th May (1947) to my father which rejected many points of the plan which he saw as the Balkanisation of his country. My father rethought and with the incredible Menon, redrafted the whole plan…,” writes Pamela.

Following Nehru’s rejection of the plan, Lord Mountbatten “rethought and…resubmitted it (the plan) to London — much to the India Office and Attlee’s confusion and perturbation”, points out Pamela, who was 17 at the time. Mountbatten then travelled to London and got the amendments to the plan — already agreed to by Nehru — “approved”.

Mountbatten returned “…to India victorious and able to press ahead urgently with the moves that would lead to Dominion Status for both India and Pakistan. The first thing that was needed was to meet and get the Indian leaders’ agreement…, and secondly, it needed announcing to the country and the wider world,” she writes.

The Viceroy also saved Nehru — a Kashmiri Brahmin — “who was emotional about the (Kashmir) problem” humiliation by convincing the Maharaja of Kashmir to accept the Mountbatten plan. “Nehru being a Kashmiri was intent on travelling to Kashmir himself to see the Maharaja, but my father realised the dangers inherent in that plan and luckily we could take up a long-standing invitation to visit the Prince ourselves. Edwina’s special relationship with Pandit Nehru was very useful for the Viceroy too.

“If things were particularly tricky my father would say to my mother, ‘Do try to get Jawaharlal to see that this is terribly important…’”