Ever since Jaswant Singh dug up Jinnah to rediscover our history, he seems to have excited our young population. This is not surprising since half of them are below the age of 25 and have no knowledge of how differently things could have turned out in 1947. For many of us who lived through Partition or who heard unpleasant stories about those days, much of what is being rediscovered is passé. Give any one of us an opportunity and time to visit a good library, or even better, the British Public Records Office in Kew, and we could pull out a few stories that could astonish our young society.

Since I was due to address a conference in the Andamans, and had heard anecdotally that we were almost cheated out of those islands during Partition, I went back into the records of the transfer of power. Even to my amazement, this is what the research revealed.

The time is around April 1947 and Mountbatten has already frightened his staff into believing that he and Edwina are booked on a flight to London on August 16. The first missive is written by the India office in London (L/P&J/10/140:ff 445). It suggests that since Indians seem to have no opinion or objections to the British determination to retain the Maldives, Seychelles, Diego Garcia and Mauritius as part of the British Indian Ocean strategic setup, why don’t they also leave the Andaman and Nicobar islands out of the draft bill on the transfer of power. True, Nehru might object, but “since we are giving them everything else... What can they do about it?”

... contd.