Freedom at Midnight

FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT

I. UNGOVERNABLE INDIA

Wavell

When Linlithgow went, Field-Marshal Viscount Wavell replaced him. A kind, generous man, with real humor – and a real talent for losing... the general who presided over the collapse of British power in the Far East during the war the general who very nearly lost the Middle East to Rommel. and DID lose Greece and Crete

Putting him in charge of India seemed inspired. At least it would keep him out of some command that would lose England the war!

Wavell had many fine qualities. He’d written a good scholarly biography of General Allenby. He had lectured at Cambridge.

He knew plenty of English verse by heart, and he wrote parody poetry.

There was no vanity in him, no hogging of glory, no bullying of

subordinates.1

Much clearer than the Conservatives running things back in London, he saw that independence MUST come.

All a Viceroy could do was ease the way.

But that easing was far beyond his skills, or anyone’s.

Congress insisted that it spoke for all India and must rule the whole subcontinent.

In fact, it spoke for the Hindus, nobody else – and the thought of Hindu control scared Moslems more than ever.

They listened to Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who with his linen suits and monocle might have been a proper English gent, and was the most adamant of all Moslems.

What he wanted was a separate state for the 90 million Muslims.

It would be named for the provinces that ought to belong to it: P for the Punjab A for the Afghan areas along the northwestern frontiers

1

Jan Morris, Farewell the Trumpets, 480.

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K for Kashmir S for the Sind ... Pakistan. And “PAK”, in religion, meant pure – the perfect name for an imperfect new Dominion.2

Gandhi argued that India should be made independent, and Pakistan could come into being after that – which Jinnah didn’t fall for, not for a minute. The moment the Hindus had their run of the house, they’d lock all the doors and keep the Muslims from...