In September 1942 Prime Minister Winston Churchill was least interested in the lack of governance and the state of the Indian masses during the famine of Bengal, in which nearly two million starved to death.

He did not agree to ship grain to India and kept 'all available shipping ready for the transport of troops to the beaches of France,' during the Normandy invasion.

In July 1945 Churchill lost the elections and Clement Attlee became the new prime minister. Attlee's cabinet was as anxious to get rid of the albatross (of India) hanging around its neck as was its predecessor, and for this purpose Viceroy Wavell was replaced by Rear Admiral Mountbatten, a cousin of King George VI, who was given 18 months to resolve the Indian imbroglio, after which India would be handed over to the Indian political leaders.

Within five months of his arrival in Delhi on March 22, 1947, Mountbatten managed to convince the British
government that partition of India was inevitable. He went ahead with his partition plan and in August 1947 the two independent dominions of India and Pakistan surfaced on the map of the world, at the cost of millions of
innocent human lives.

In his book Shameful Flight The Last Years of the British Empire in India, Professor Stanley Wolpert quotes BBC's John Osman who interviewed Mountbatten shortly after the 1965 war between India and Pakistan about 'his own judgment on how he had performed in India.' 'I f***ed it up' was Mountbatten's reply.

Stanley Wolpert is a professor of history at the University of California and specialises in South Asian history. His book Jinnah of Pakistan is considered one of the most authentic biographies of the Quaid-i-Azam and is a part of the curriculum of several universities in Pakistan.

He has also authored Gandhi's Passion The life and legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru A tryst with destiny, Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan His life and times and A New History of India.

The book under review is a clinical study and an impartial account of the 'half decade [1942-47] of diplomatic missions and intense political negotiations launched by the British Raj to try to keep India secure.'

In early 1942 Prime Minister Churchill sent seasoned diplomat Sir Stafford Cripps to India to propose a 'dominion status' for India within the British Commonwealth after the world war ended. Cripps's proposal also included an 'opt-out' clause which enabled provinces to retain their 'existing constitutional position.' To the Indian National Congress this 'opt-out' clause meant an endorsement of the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan and therefore it rejected the proposal.

The Simla Conference which started on June 25, 1945 and ended on July 11, 1945 was also a failure as Mr Jinnah and the Muslim League maintained that all Muslim members of the political council of the Viceroy must be nominated by the League.

After Churchill lost the election to Clement Attlee, the British cabinet decided to send a mission of three cabinet members to resolve the deadlock between the Congress and the League. Although Jinnah agreed to the proposals of the Cabinet Mission, the Congress denounced them. Meanwhile communal killings had erupted in most parts of India and British officials and troops started fleeing home instead of trying to maintain law and order in India.

The book is an important addition to the literature regarding the Partition because of its uncompromising neutrality and authentic scholarship. The personas of Gandhi, Jinnah and Nehru have, over a period of time, become demigods of sorts in India and Pakistan.

Most Indians and Pakistanis consider it taboo to question or crticise their handling of the division and the events preceding it. Wolpert, however, lets us know about the blunders and prejudices of these leaders alongside their valuable contributions.

In the aftermath of the Cabinet Mission's failure, Wavell invited both parties to form a coalition interim government. But the sagacious 'Gandhi insisted that a coalition was “the wrong way of forming a government,” reiterating that it should be left to one party or the other.'

Gandhi's demand was not compatible with the need of the hour, given the political turmoil India was in, and its ethnic and religious diversity. His insistence on one-party government meant the inevitable partition of India (to which he claimed to be against throughout) as the two political parties were unable to resolve their differences to accommodate each other in a coalition government.

Pandit Nehru had a personal bias against Mr Jinnah apart from their political differences. When Mountbatten asked him about Mr Jinnah, 'Nehru who himself had never really liked to practice law, even called him a “mediocre lawyer”, though Jinnah was the most successful and possibly the most brilliant barrister of British India.'

Nehru also asked Mountbatten not to give Muslim-majority Gurdaspur to Pakistan although Sir Cyril Radcliffe had included Gurdaspur in Pakistan in his partition plan. By letting Nehru have Gurdaspur, Mountbatten ensured India's access to the valley of Kashmir which remains a bone of contention between the two countries. Shortly after the partition the consequences of Mountbatten's 'frenzied' plans dawned on Nehru and he was 'shocked and staggered.'

During his only visit to East Pakistan Mr Jinnah committed 'his worst blunder by insisting that Urdu must remain the only national language of Pakistan, [while] addressing a third of a million Bengalis, who had waited all day in the sun to hear him speak bitter words in a foreign language.' In 1971 East Pakistan would be reborn as Bangladesh — the land of Bengali speakers.

Addressing the Pakistan's Constituent Assembly, as its president, on August 11 1947, Mr Jinnah articulated 'his secular and liberal ideals to his Muslim followers, many of whom found them impossible to comprehend.'

This sowed the seeds of one of the most complex political, religious and ideological imbroglios which has marred Pakistan in recent decades and continues to do so to date.

Shameful Flight The last years of the British Empire in India

By Stanley Wolpert
Oxford University Press, Pakistan
ISBN 9780195151985
238pp. Rs495