Jewel in the dust

It was a bizarre end to an empire on which, it was predicted, the sun would never set. Its ending at midnight on 15 August 60 years ago was captured in Nehru's resonant words: "Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge." Instead of the free and united India which he and the guru of the independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi, had dreamed of, they inherited a subcontinent riven by religious dissension which degenerated, literally within days, into a genocide that shocked the world.

In this impressive debut, Alex von Tunzelmann sets the drama of Britain's precipitant retreat from her most highly prized colonial possession, the "Jewel in the Crown", against the intrigue which unfolded with the appointment of Earl Mountbatten as the last viceroy - a love triangle involving his countess, Edwina, and the first premier of free India, Jawaharlal Nehru. The author describes this rapidly developing affair, at the height of the crisis sparked by independence, while also emphasising the considerable influence it had on the partition of the subcontinent.

For once, the emotive term "secret history" has some validity, with von Tunzelmann admitting that the controversial nature of the events of 1947-48 meant that some of her informants asked not to be named. However, she reveals that despite repeated approaches to the Mountbatten and Nehru-Gandhi families, she was denied access to the private correspondence of Edwina and Nehru - "a pity," as she says, "in view of the light it would undoubtedly shed on some of the 20th century's most fascinating personalities and politics".

A perhaps more serious loss were the papers of Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the London barrister charged with drawing up the lines of partition between the newly independent states. Mountbatten apparently applied pressure on the hapless lawyer (deliberately confined in isolation to ensure an unbiased report) to change the Punjabi border in favour of India. The pressure originated from Nehru. Von Tunzelmann says, " throughout the rest of his life, Mountbatten kept up the position that he had never interfered with Radcliffe. This was a lie, as he allows in at least one private letter." This tinkering with the map of the subcontinent cost possibly a million lives as enraged Muslims and Sikhs ran amok, in an orgy of tit- for- tat torture and slayings.

Radcliffe, as the author observes, had the good sense to get on the plane to London just as the celebratory fireworks for an independent India went off. His parting words were grimly prophetic: "Nobody in India will love me for my award about the Punjab and Bengal and there will be roughly 80 million people with a grievance who will come looking for me. I don't want them to find me!" At his insistence, his papers on partition were burnt.

Von Tunzelmann has used the epistolary indiscretions of the last viceroy with relish, fleshed out with revelations from the diaries of friends such as Noel Coward and witnesses, Indian and British, testifying to this great showman's sheer chutzpah. As the figurehead of our victorious Forgotten Army in the reconquest of Asia, Mountbatten was considered the ideal choice as "honest broker" to achieve Clement Attlee's declared aim of granting independence to India at an early, but still vague date which took account of concerns from the outgoing viceroy, Lord Wavell, about the consequences of a "mis-timed and ill-judged" departure. ( The papers on "Operation Madhouse", Wavell's plan for a staged withdrawal, have mysteriously disappeared from the Indian national archives.)

Mountbatten, as his papers show, pressed Attlee for a firm date and the premier capitulated, giving the king's cousin a brief to get Britain out in nine months at most, whether the Indians were ready or not. Attlee willed the end and was not particularly concerned about the means - any chaos wouldn't happen on Britain's watch.

"The task of reconciling Indian politicians, re-establishing public order (in a country already experiencing sectarian violence and urban mayhem) and finding a formula for an independent India was awesome," says von Tunzelmann, " and quite beyond Mountbatten's experience." But the new viceroy's charm offensive won over first Nehru, the Congress leader, who had initiated the "Quit India" movement in 1942 - and then his own wife.

Von Tunzelmann builds the tension in the countdown to independence nicely, with Mountbatten springing a surprise departure date of 15 August, a mere 10 weeks away - facing Nehru and Jinnah, "father" of the new Pakistan, with a fait accompli of a divided India and a "moth-eaten" Muslim national state. No one, it was later claimed, had urged him to bring forward the independence deadline, originally June 1948, and the Indian princes, as well as leading Muslims, were begging the British to stay. However, the author makes the interesting point that this crisis coincided with a major state of froideur in the Mountbattens' marriage.