Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

by Alex von Tunzelmann

Overview

An extraordinary story of romance, history, and divided loyalties — set against the backdrop of one of the most dramatic events of the twentieth century

The stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, liberated 400 million people from the British Empire. With the loss of India, its greatest colony, Britain ceased to be a superpower, and its king ceased to sign himself Rex Imperator.

This defining moment of world history had been brought about by a handful of people. Among them were Jawaharlal Nehru, the fiery Indian prime minister; Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the leader of the new Islamic Republic of Pakistan; Mohandas Gandhi, the mystical figure who enthralled a nation; and Louis and Edwina Mountbatten, the glamorous but unlikely couple who had been dispatched to get Britain out of India. Within hours of the midnight chimes, their dreams of freedom and democracy would turn to chaos, bloodshed, and war.

Behind the scenes, a secret personal drama was also unfolding, as Edwina Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru began a passionate love affair. Their romance developed alongside Cold War conspiracies, the beginning of a terrible conflict in Kashmir, and an epic sweep of events that saw one million people killed and ten million dispossessed.

Steeped in the private papers and reflections of the participants, Alex von Tunzelmann's Indian Summer reveals, in vivid, exhilarating detail, how the actions of a few extraordinary people changed the lives of millions and determined the fate of nations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312428112
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	09/30/2008
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	541,694
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Alex von Tunzelmann was educated at Oxford and lives in London. Indian Summer is her first book.

Read an Excerpt

Indian Summer

The Secret History of the End of an Empire

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By Von Tunzelmann, Alex

Henry Holt and Co.

Copyright © 2007 Von Tunzelmann, Alex
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780805080735

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Excerpt A Tryst with Destiny On a warm summer night in 1947, the largest empire the world has ever seen did something no empire had done before. It gave up. The British Empire did not decline, it simply fell; and it fell proudly and majestically onto its own sword. It was not forced out by revolution, nor defeated by a greater rival in battle. Its leaders did not tire or weaken. Its culture was strong and vibrant. Recently it had been victorious in the century’s definitive war. When midnight struck in Delhi on the night of 14 August 1947, a new, free Indian nation was born. In London, the time was 8:30 p.m.1 The world’s capital could enjoy another hour or two of a warm summer evening before the sun literally and finally set on the British Empire. The Constituent Assembly of India was convened at that moment in New Delhi, a monument to the self-confidence of the British government, which had built its eastern capital on the site of seven fallen cities. Each of the seven had been built to last forever. And so was New Delhi, a colossal arrangement of sandstone neoclassicism and wide boulevards lined with banyan trees. Seen from the sky, the interlocking series ofavenues and roundabouts formed a pattern like the marble trellises of geometric stars that ventilated Mogul palaces. New Delhi was India, but constructed—and, they thought, improved upon—by the British. The French prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, had laughed when he saw the new city half built in 1920, and observed: “Ça sera la plus magnifique de toutes ces ruines.”2 Inside the chamber of the Constituent Assembly on the night of 14 August 1947, two thousand princes and politicians from across the one and a quarter million square miles that remained of India sat together on parliamentary benches.
Yet amid all the power and finery, two persons were conspicuous by their absence. One was Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, who was in one of those parts of the empire that had just become Pakistan. His absence signified the partition of the subcontinent, the split which had ripped two wings off the body of India and called them West and East Pakistan (later Pakistan and Bangladesh), creating Muslim homelands separate from the predominantly Hindu mass of the territory. The other truant was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was sound asleep in a smashed-up mansion in a riot-torn suburb of Calcutta. Gandhi’s absence was a worrying omen. The seventy-seven-year-old Mahatma, or “great soul,” was the most famous and the most popular Indian since Buddha. Regarded as little short of a saint among Christians as well as Hindus, he had been a staunch defender of the British Empire until the 1920s. Since then, he had campaigned for Indian self-rule. Many times it had been almost within his grasp: in 1922, 1931, 1942, 1946. Each time he had let it go. Now, finally, India was free, but that had nothing to do with Gandhi—and Gandhi would have nothing to do with it. In the chamber the dignitaries fell silent as the foremost among them, Jawaharlal Nehru, stepped up to make one of the most famous speeches in history. At fifty-seven years old, Nehru had grown into his role as India’s leading statesman. His last prison term had finished exactly twenty-six months before. The fair skin and fine bone structure of an aristocratic Kashmiri Brahmin was rendered approachable by a ready smile and warm laugh. Dark, sleepy, soulful eyes belied a quick wit and quicker temper. In him were all the virtues of the ancient nation, filtered through the best aspects of the British Empire: confidence, sophistication and charisma. “Long years ago,” he began, “we made a tryst with destiny. And now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge; not wholly or in full measure, but substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” The clock struck, and, in that instant, he became the new country’s first prime minister. The reverential mood in the hall was broken abruptly by an unexpected honk from the back. The dignitaries jerked their heads around to the source of the sound, and a look of relief passed over their faces as they saw a devout Hindu member of the assembly blowing into a conch shell—an invocation of the gods. Mildred Talbot, a journalist who was present, noticed that the interruption had not daunted the new prime minister. “When I happened to spot Nehru just as he was turning away, he was trying to hide a smile by covering his mouth with his hand.”3 It was the culmination of a lifetime’s struggle; and yet, as Nehru later confided to his sister, his mind had not been on the splendid words. A few hours before, he had received a telephone call from Lahore in what was about to become West Pakistan. It was his mother’s hometown and a place where he had spent much of his childhood.4 Now it was being torn apart. Gangs of Muslims and Sikhs had clashed in the streets. The main gurdwara—the Sikh temple—was ablaze. One hundred thousand people were trapped inside the city walls without water or medical assistance. Violence was a much-predicted consequence of the handover, but preparations for dealing with it had been catastrophically inadequate. The only help available in Lahore was from two hundred Gurkhas, stationed nearby, under the command of an inexperienced British captain who was only twenty years old. They had little chance of stopping the carnage.
The horror of that night in Lahore set the tone for weeks of bloodshed and destruction. Perhaps the Hindu astrologers had been right when they had declared 14 August to be an inauspicious date. Or perhaps the viceroy’s curious decision to rush independence through ten months ahead of the British government’s schedule was to blame. Emerging into the streets of Delhi, Nehru was greeted by the ringing of temple bells, the bangs and squeals of fireworks and the happy shouting of crowds. Guns were fired, in celebration rather than in anger; an effigy of British imperialism was burned, in both.5 Soon afterward, Nehru arrived at the Viceroy’s House, a gated citadel at the end of Kingsway, New Delhi’s two-mile processional avenue. He and Rajendra Prasad, the leader of the Constituent Assembly, were to see the last of the viceroys, Earl Mountbatten of Burma.6 At forty-seven, Mountbatten was young for a viceroy but no less assured for it. Tall, broad-shouldered and handsome, he had a brilliant Hollywood smile, easy wit and immediate charm; it might never have been guessed that he had been born a prince were it not for his ability to switch to a regal demeanor. The new earl and his countess, Edwina, had kept an appropriate distance from the festivities. While freedom was declared, the couple had spent the night at home, pottering around their palace and helping the servants tidy away anything marked with an imperial emblem. They had taken a brief break to watch the latest Bob Hope movie, My Favorite Brunette. It was a pastiche of the fashionable noir genre: the story of a wayward but irresistible baroness, played by the sultry Dorothy Lamour, whose feminine wiles drag a number of men into a dangerous conspiracy. No more than a handful of those in the Viceroy’s House that evening could have realized what a very apposite choice of film it was. While Nehru had been declaring his nation’s independence and worrying about the emerging crisis in Lahore, Mountbatten had been sitting in his study alone, thinking to himself, as he later recollected, “For still a few minutes I am the most powerful man on earth.”7 At 11:58 p.m., he settled on a last act of showmanship, creating the Australian wife of the Nawab of Palanpur a highness, in defiance of Indian caste customs and British policy. It was an act epitomizing Mountbatten’s character.
Kingmaking was his favorite sport. Two minutes later, and the power had vanished. Nehru and Prasad were greeted by the viceroy’s wife, Edwina Mountbatten, in lively form despite the lateness of the hour. Vivacious, chic and slim, at forty-five Edwina was still in her prime. Her position as one of the world’s richest women had never made her happy. But, over the course of the previous few years, she had finally found a role for herself, leading health and welfare campaigns for the Red Cross and St. John Ambulance Brigade. The heiress to millions had never been happier than when she was working in the hot, rough and filthy refugee camps that had been set up across the riot-scarred Punjab. In India, Edwina had blossomed, both in the revelation of her own work and in her close friendships with the Indian leaders, particularly Gandhi and Nehru. It was the second of these friendships that was already the subject of gossip in Delhi society. The warmth shared by India’s new prime minister and Lady Mountbatten was obvious. It was equally obvious that Lord Mountbatten minded not at all. In contrast to the erupting turmoil across the subcontinent, the scene between imperial lord and victorious revolutionary that night was one of astonishing civility. For half a century Nehru had devoted his life to this single goal of throwing off the yoke of British Empire. Now it was done, and his first action as prime minister was to pay a call to the power he had just displaced—and to offer it a job. “When one thinks of the sad years that have led up to recent events,” noted Lady Mountbatten, “I suppose this was the most surprising development of all.”8 Nehru and Prasad were invited into Mountbatten’s study, followed by an unruly gaggle of reporters. Photographers scrambled onto the furniture, standing on French-polished tables to get the best angles, firing off a blitz of flashbulbs which shattered noisily over the journalists who squeezed to the front.
The exhausted Prasad began to stammer an invitation for Lord Mountbatten to become governor-general of the new Indian nation, but lost his words. Nehru stepped in to complete them, and Mountbatten graciously accepted. He then poured out glasses of port for those present. “To India,” he proclaimed, holding his glass aloft. Nehru replied, “To King George VI.” Few missed the significance of the moment. Some years before, Nehru had refused to attend a banquet in Ceylon on the grounds that toasts would be proposed to the king and the government.9 But while in Delhi the gentlemen toasted nations and kings, their new world was turning into a battlefield. As viceroy, Lord Mountbatten had wielded unprecedented power over the fates of two nations and 400 million people. He had transferred power in a way that, within the next couple of days, would trigger a state of civil war in both nations, followed by a war between the two of them. Millions of people would be displaced; millions would be wounded; hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions more, would die. During the next few days, riots would spread across the divided states of the Punjab and Bengal, and a holocaust would begin. The following night, the Mountbattens held a grand reception for Nehru at their palace. In the gorgeous expanse of the Mughal Gardens, water flowed from fountains around terraces of pink stone from Jaipur; squirrels scampered up the trunks of bougainvillea trees; the heavy scent of roses hung around sunken beds. The party was a dazzling swan song for British India. Everyone had expected that such a day would be glorious in India’s history; but, thanks to Mountbatten, it had somehow been made glorious in Britain’s as well. Thanks to his impressive gift for public relations, the end of empire was presented as the purpose of empire: India was like a well-nurtured and fattened chick, raised to fly from the imperial nest, while Britain, the indulgent parent, looked on with pride. And so the British were able to celebrate their loss alongside the Indians, who celebrated their victory. Comforting fictions were established that happy night: that the British left India with dignity, having seen the errors of their ways through Gandhi’s soft but compelling persuasion; that the Indian independence campaign won its prize by nonviolence and civil disobedience; that the departure of the British was completed with enough goodwill to pave the way for genuine friendship between India and the West, and separately between Pakistan and the West; that the end of the British Empire in India was a triumph for freedom.10 The world was redefined that night, but not in the way that most of those present thought.
On either side of Old Europe, two new powers were rising to world superiority—and both took a close interest in the new dominions of India and Pakistan. In the East, Stalin’s Russia was in the process of supporting Communist movements across Europe and Asia, bolstering the influence of Moscow and extending its borders. In the West, the president of the United States of America had announced the Truman Doctrine just five months before. He had stated his intent to promote democracy across the world and resist the tide of communism flowing forth from Russia. The Americans had become particularly concerned about its flow into India, and Russian agents were already suspected of funding Indian Communist parties in Bengal. That very night, Nehru’s sister and close confidante, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, was in Moscow, preparing to present her credentials to Stalin as free India’s first ambassador. Though its envoys were on good terms with Nehru, the U.S. government was alarmed by these developments and moved fast to create a new alliance with Pakistan. During the nineteenth century, Britain and Russia had played the “Great Game” for control of central Asia, centered in Afghanistan and the territory that would become West Pakistan. In 1947, the United States was gearing up to play a new Great Game against Russia, and the slow but significant rise of a fundamentalist Islamic movement would ensure that Afghanistan and Pakistan would remain at the center of international politics well into the next century. As darkness fell on 15 August 1947, Delhi’s Mughal Gardens glowed with thousands of tiny lights set among the jacaranda trees, and with hundreds of distinguished guests. Among the long avenues of gold mohur and flame-of-the-forest trees, princes chatted cordially to freedom fighters, and Hindu radicals to British soldiers. There was a sense of hope and magic, as two of the twentieth century’s greatest men fulfilled their ultimate ambitions. Nehru became leader of a free India, and Mountbatten played the role of a king—with Edwina as his queen. Few of the guests watching this display would have suspected that the celebration was about to be blown apart. Copyright © 2007 by Alex von Tunzelmann. All rights reserved. 

Continues...

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Excerpted from Indian Summer by Von Tunzelmann, Alex Copyright © 2007 by Von Tunzelmann, Alex. Excerpted by permission.
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Editorial Reviews

In Indian Summer, Alex von Tunzelmann pays particular attention to how negotiations were shaped by an interplay of personalities. . . . her account, unlike those of some of her fellow British historians, isn't filtered by nostalgia.” —The New Yorker

“A brilliantly vivid page-turner that captures the backstage dramas raging on the eve of India's independence.” —Tina Brown

“Irresistible . . . A fascinating book that may well change how we look on the benighted world in which we live today.” —Los Angeles Times

“[A] captivating group portrait, pulling forth the most telling details of each figure's inner life. . . . To have turned an era of such significance and continuing relevance into a page-turner, to both entertain and educate, is an admirable accomplishment.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“A fascinating behind-the-scenes account of the breakup of British rule in India.” —NPR's Fresh Air

“[Von Tunzelmann] keeps us riveted. . . . [She] has a fine knack for teasing out the play of personality in momentous events.” —Houston Chronicle

“Von Tunzelman is witty, erudite, and thoughtful about her subject. . . . An opinionated and sardonic writer, [she] is perfectly willing to take on both saints and heroes.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“Scintillating . . . compelling narrative history, combining dramatic sweep with dishy detail.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“This is history as multiple, interconnected biography. . . . Indian Summer achieves something both simpler and rarer, placing the behavior and feelings of a few key players at the center of a tumultuous moment in history.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Stirring . . . brisk . . . absorbingly readable.” —Fortune

"Indian Summer is a true tour de force: absorbing in its detail and masterly in the broad sweep of its canvas.” —Sir Martin Gilbert, author of The Somme

“Indian Summer is outstandingly vivid and authoritative. Alex von Tunzelmann brings a lively new voice to narrative history-writing.” —Victoria Glendinning, author of Leonard Woolf

“Alex von Tunzelmann is a wonderful historian, as learned as she is shrewd. But she is also something more unexpected: a writer with a wit and an eye for character that Evelyn Waugh would surely have admired.” —Tom Holland, author of Rubicon and Persian Fire

“An engaging, controversial, very lively and, at times, refreshingly irreverent tour de force. Alex von Tunzelmann has written a dramatic story, laced with tragedy and farce, and done so very well; a remarkable debut.” —Lawrence James, author of The Middle Class: A History and Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India

From the Publisher

For those who enjoy gossip about British royalty but also have a serious interest in history, Indian Summer, by Alex von Tunzelmann, will be welcome. It removes the veil from the colorful personalities and events behind India's independence and partition with Pakistan, exploring the eccentricities and peccadilloes of the subcontinent's last British rulers and first democratic leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohandas Gandhi…The author moves easily between these stories, as well as that of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the man who would lead Pakistan. She makes the connections and keeps track of every part of the story while moving it all forward. She has a wicked wit.
—The Washington Post

Joanne Collings

In the flood of books marking the anniversary of independence, this one is different. It does not seek to apportion blame, nor offer an exhaustive account of events, nor even, despite its subtitle, to expose the secrets of that time. Except for one rather unnecessary homily at the end, it suggests no prescriptions for the future. Instead, Indian Summer achieves something both simpler and rarer, placing the behavior and feelings of a few key players at the center of a tumultuous moment in history.
—The New York Times

Ben Macintyre

The transfer of power from the British Empire to the new nations of India and Pakistan in the summer of 1947 was one of history's great, and tragic, epics: 400 million people won independence, and perhaps as many as one million died in sectarian violence among Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. In her scintillating debut, British author von Tunzelmann keeps one eye on the big picture, but foregrounds the personalities and relationships of the main political leaders-larger-than-life figures whom she cuts down to size. She portrays Gandhi as both awe inspiring and, with his antisex campaigns and inflexible moralism, an exasperating eccentric. British viceroy Louis "Dickie" Mountbatten comes off as a clumsy diplomat dithering over flag designs while his partition plan teetered on the brink of disaster. Meanwhile, his glamorous, omnicompetent wife, Edwina, looks after refugees and carries on an affair with the handsome, stalwart Indian statesman Nehru. Von Tunzelmann's wit is cruel-"Gandhi... wanted to spread the blessings of poverty and humility to all people"-but fair in its depictions of complex, often charismatic people with feet of clay. The result is compelling narrative history, combining dramatic sweep with dishy detail. 8 pages of b&w photos. (Aug.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

In her debut work, Tunzelmann offers an extremely well-written and lively history of a pivotal time for two nations. While Britain and India prepared for the post-World War II dismantling of the former empire, the political players found that disentangling the two powers was more complicated than anticipated. In describing the behind-the-scenes history of the crises accompanying Indian independence and partition, the author focuses predominantly on Louis and Edwina Mountbatten, Mohandas Gandhi, and Jawaharlal Nehru and how their personal lives affected the political situation and one another. Tunzelmann maintains that while Mountbatten, as the final viceroy of India, was mainly bemused and stymied by the infinite challenges of the rising Indian government, his wife was far more competent in grasping these complexities while efficiently doing humanitarian work. In fact, it was her close relationship with Prime Minister Nehru that raised eyebrows and may have altered the course of history. This is an eye-opening view of a remarkable time, as the British Empire divested itself of its largest colony and a new world power was born. For another perspective on the strong personalities behind these changes, see Shashi Tharoor's Nehru. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ5/1/07.]
—Elizabeth Morris

Library Journal

Tepid account of the end of the Raj, though with a little imperialist-colonialist hanky-panky thrown in for good measure. It is small news that Britain ceded its empire willingly, forgetting about little exceptions such as the U.S. and Malaysia. When it gave up India at midnight on August 14, 1947, the civil strife that led to the partition of India and Pakistan ensued almost instantly. The architect of empire's end-and, at least in part, of that partition-was the viceroy, Lord Mountbatten of Burma, "Dickie" to his friends, who, British historian von Tunzelmann writes, had a jape two minutes before his tenure ran out by "creating the Australian wife of the Nawab of Palanpur a highness, in defiance of Indian caste customs and British policy." Hardly an example of enlightened rule, one might think, but Dickie had a thoroughly modern attitude otherwise, even encouraging his wife Edwina to enjoy a menage-a-trois with none other than Jawaharlal Nehru, on the way to becoming the father of his country. Edwina was the chief beneficiary of the arrangement; writes von Tunzelmann, "With Dickie, she was in an affectionate, sexless companionship; with Jawahar, she had found something more profound and more passionate." All well and good, and even though Edwina would later threaten divorce and took off by herself for India annually once the couple had returned to England, Dickie was at ease, continuing a long correspondence with Nehru on such things as the status of Kashmir and the political makeup of Nehru's new cabinet-the dry and boring stuff of history, in other words. Von Tunzelmann too frequently strives for effect ("Bose emerged from the foam off the coast of Singapore, a fascist Aphroditespewed up from the deep"), and the Mountbattens' unusual accommodation too often threatens to overshadow the real story, which is that of Indian independence. That story is better told elsewhere, most recently Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi (2007).

Kirkus Reviews