Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India [Hardcover]

The book is outstanding for many reasons: It is written in an easy style that would force you to read it one go, quite rarely seen in books covering history. Yet the book has sufficient background research that can only be expected from UCLA's professor of history. It has a balanced presentation of facts by a scholar far removed by geography and time from the events.

Stanley Wolpert provides some interesting insights:

British rule of India is a tale of incompetence:

In 1943, India produced 50 million tons of food grains - enough to feed its population of 400 million. Yet 1.5 million people died of starvation in Bengal that year primarily due to mismanagement.

Bengal's governor Herbert and Viceroy Lord Wavell pleaded for food grains to be sent to Bengal. Britain's war transport minister Baron Frederick James Leathers kept 6 million tons stored in ships in Indian Ocean unused. Wavell's report to London says "the famine in Bengal was largely due to ministerial incompetence".

The incompetence was acknowledged in London as well. Churchill's Secretary of State for India Leopold Amery confesses in a private letter to the Viceroy Linlithgow "nothing has convinced me more than the Cabinet meetings.... of the fundamental incapacity of a British cabinet to try and govern India".

Viceroy Wavell condemns Churchill four years later after sitting in one cabinet meeting: "He hates India and everything to do with it. Winston knows as much of the Indian problem as George III did of the American colonies!"

British rule of India is a tale of political insensitivity.

The best example of this insensitivity is Winston Churchill's peevish telegram to his Viceroy asking "why Gandhi has not died yet?" after releasing the Mahatma from prison because of medical conditions. Not a class-act in international politics.

Partition could have been avoided with greater wisdom in Indian/British leadership.

In 1937 provincial elections the Congress won clear majority in six of the eleven provinces. Jinnah's Muslim league failed to win a single province. Jinnah appealed to Nehru to agree to coalition ministries in the multicultural provinces. Nehru refused and retorted that there were only two parties left: "the British and the Congress". Jinnah devoted the next ten years to create Pakistan. If Nehru had pursued an "inclusive style of politics" there would have been no opportunity to "divide and rule".

1946 offered another opportunity to unite. British Secretary of State, Lord Pethick Lawrence advocated a coalition cabinet (made up of Congress and Muslim League) that decides by consensus and not by majority vote. Nehru declined to cede parity to Muslim league and share power. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad sadly reflected in his autobiography that "Jawaharlal's mistake in 1937 had been bad enough. The mistake of 1946 proved even more costly". This resolved Jinnah to insist on partition.

Britain played the "divide and rule" card to the long term detriment of India. Viceroys were quick to ignore good examples. Chief Ministers Sikandar Hayat Khan and Fazl-i-Husain governed Punjab province by using local patriotism and common language to unify the multi-religious constituency. It was the same Punjab that recorded the largest death triggered by inept governing.

British rule had no strategy to deal with partition.

Britain, as a colonial ruler, has a history of shameful behaviour. In 1942, when Britain exited Burma "the civil administration suddenly collapsed and those in charge sought their own safety. Private motor cars were commandeered for the evacuation of Europeans, leaving their owners stranded. .... The city of Rangoon was left at the mercy of .... hardened criminals". There was no thought for life after British rule.

Months ahead of Indian independence British staff were evacuated to Britain leaving no credible law enforcement mechanism for the infant governments of India and Pakistan to deal with the migration induced violence and death.

Mountbatten was aware of the likely violence and the lack of a plan to deal with this. Though Cyril Radcliffe's maps with the boundary lines of India and Pakistan were ready earlier, Mountbatten kept it under lock and key until the pageantry, splendor and photo opportunities of Indpendence day and the British could no more be blamed for the violence or the ineptitude with which it was handled. His reasoning: "the earlier it was published, the more the British would have to bear the responsibility for the disturbances which would undoubtedly result". Reasonable opportunity to manage the migration was denied for the sake of glory.

Says Bengal Secretary John Dawson Tyson, "Mountbatten's focus was on withdrawal in fairly peaceful conditions..... the India after 15 August will not be the kind of country I should want to live in"

Rear Admiral Viscount Lord Louis Francis Albert Victor Mountbatten expressed what he thought about the way he had done his job in India to BBC's John Osmon in 1965. Thirty nine years later Osman says that though he dislikes using vulgar slang, the only honest way of reporting accurately what the last Viceroy said was "I fu....d it up".

Stanley Wolpert concludes that both India and Pakistan are still saddled with the bitter legacies of Great Britain's hasty, shameful flight.

Excellent book.

I expected more from this book. There were 3 clear errors in the Introduction which unfortunately slipped through :

1. At page 4 there was a statement that the Lieutenant Governor Michael O'Dwyer issued the infamous `crawling orders' of Amritsar. This is incorrect. The order was issued by Brigadier-General REH Dyer. (see page 50 of The Hunter Committee's Report on The Amritsar Massacre,1919- General Dyer in the Punjab © The Stationery Office 2000 )

2. At page 5 commenting on Gandhi's rationale for his famous "salt march" it was stated that millions of India's poorest peasants required salt to survive India's intense heat. Salt is a basic necessity of life but it is not required to survive intense heat . ( see page 61 INDIRA-The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi by Katherine Frank ©2001 )

3. At page 14 there was a statement that the British ships Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by Japanese suicide and torpedo bombers. The Japanese only introduced the kamikaze suicide planes in Oct 1944 in the battle for the Philippines. ( see page 776 A World At Arms by Gerhard Weinberg 1994 ed.)

The book is more a narrative than an analysis. Facts are presented mainly based on the British records compiled in The Transfer of Power volumes. It is unfortunate such facts and opinions were not tested against the records of the Indian nationalists. I finished this book with the knowledge of the author's case for the culpability of Lord Mountbatten for the Partition and the numerous deaths that followed but with my thirst for a fuller picture insatiated.

This book can be summed up as a comprehensive compendium of events that took place before the partition of the Indian sub-continent. As someone from India, I really appreciated the research of the author in bringing these facts to light. History lessons in school are almost always over-simplified and it is only through books like this that we see the leaders in flesh and blood.

After finishing this book, I have gained a renewed sense of how inevitable partition of the sub-continent was - the fissures between the 2 major communities, accentuated by 900 years of warfare, were too deep to be puttied over. It was also disheartening to read how divisive the so-called 'great leaders' were - a recurring feature of Indian politics is the lack of collective discipline and it was no different at the time of partition.

As another reviewer remarked, this book is solely written from a British perspective and so it is definitely not multi-dimensional. This maybe a short book, but the style is terse and academic, and the text is heavy with references. There are also no lurid details of the massacres or any detailed anecdotes (like in 'Freedom at Midnight') and because of the absence of personal stories, this book would appeal more to the history student than to the general public.