Source - http://www.delhilive.com/mountbatten-redrafted-plan-for-nehru-viceroys-daughter
Lamat R Hasan
New Delhi, Jul 19 (PTI) India's last Viceroy Lord Mountbatten had to redraft the plan to give dominion status to both India and Pakistan after Jawaharlal Nehru, who shared a "special relationship" with the Viceroy's wife, Edwina, rejected many points of the plan saying it was tantamount to the "Balkanisation" of the country.
Nehru, who was prone to mood swings, was invited by Lord Mountbatten to Simla to get a feedback on the plan. But Nehru turned down the plan and wrote a "bombshell" letter to the Viceroy, writes Pamela Mountbatten, the Viceroy's younger daughter in her book "India Remembered: A Personal Account of the Mountbattens During the Transfer of Power".
"... 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 and brilliant V P Menon, redrafted the whole plan...," writes Pamela, who travelled with her parents to India in 1947.
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 (of course he already had that from Nehru), 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. There was therefore a political expedient to our trip to Kashmir -- to convince the Maharaja to accept the plan -- and save Nehru the humiliation," writes Pamela, who was coaxed by her daughter India to record her 15-month stay in India.
Edwina's "special relationship" with Pandit Nehru was very useful for the Viceroy too. "Pandit Nehru was a Kashmiri himself, so he was emotional about the problem. If things were particularly tricky my father would say to my mother, 'Do try to get Jawaharlal to see that this is terribly important...'" However, Lord Mountbatten's charm offensive -- a tool he used before launching his pragmatic strategies -- fell flat on Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who was intent on creating Pakistan.
The Mountbattens, who were very optimistic about the chance to mediate between Jawaharlal Nehru and Congress and Jinnah and the Muslim League, found it difficult to "crack" Jinnah. "My father could talk of nothing else because he could not crack Jinnah and this had never happened to him before. He later admitted that he didn't realise how impossible his task was going to be till he met Jinnah," writes Pamela.
In a letter to his elder daughter the last Viceroy signalled just how depressed he was with the situation. "'I have boobed', he wrote mournfully. It was the only time he admitted it," writes Pamela.
In a section titled "Operation Seduction" Pamela points out that Jinnah was intent on creating Pakistan ever since he had been introduced to the concept at the history-shaping meeting in Waldorf in London in 1933.
However, Mountbatten thought that Partition was an absurd idea but inevitable as the Indians wanted independence and couldn't agree.
Edwina also recorded her impressions of the Nehru-Jinnah meet: "Two very clever and queer people. I rather liked them but found them fanatical on this Pakistan and quite impractical." In another diary entry she calls Jinnah a "meglo-maniac (sic)" and says "god help Pakistan". Jinnah even put paid to Lord Mountbatten's plan who wanted to become Governor-General (G-G) of both India and Pakistan -- by announcing that he (Jinnah) would become G-G of Pakistan.
"This left my father to decide whether to accept the offer to become G-G of India and therefore to go against every non-partisan plan he had stood for in his tenure. Indeed his later acceptance of the governor-generalship of India did tarnish his impartial reputation and kindled persistent rumours that he was anti-Muslim League," she writes.
The only time "Mr Jinnah" -- as Lord Mountbatten called him -- showed "emotion" was when he was seeing the Mountbattens off after the Independence Day function in Karachi.
"Jinnah was an icy man, but on this occasion he showed emotion. He leant over to my father, put his hand on his knee and said with evident feeling...'Your Excellency, I'm so glad to get you back safely.'"
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