How Sardar Patel Averted an Attempted Siege of Delhi

A CHAPTER OF BRITISH COLONIALISM IS RAISED TO AN ART FORM. Colonial England made some sections of its colonies feel grateful for being colonised. It was sub­terfuge, also a delusion of confounding guilt with gratitude.

The greatest success of this exercise of self-absolution was—is—seen in the new politi­cal and social elite of India, which believed that British rule had benefitted this backward country. It is a familiar story that is yet to be documented down to its minutest detail.

Two analyses taken at random bolster this point.

In her fine work Indian Summer, Alex von Tunzelmann narrates the story of how on the night of August 14, Jawaharlal Nehru poured champagne into his and Mountbatten’s glass and both men raised a toast.

Nehru: “to India.”

Mountbatten: “to King George VI.”

The following night—after formally announcing that India was free at last—the Mountbattens threw a grand dinner party for Nehru, their favourite Indian. This is how Tunzelmann describes it: “The party was a dazzling swansong 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 as a well-nurtured and fattened chick, raised to fly from the imperial nest while Britain, the indulgent parent, looked on with pride…Comforting fictions were established that happy night: that the British left India with dignity, having seen the error of their ways through Gandhi’s soft but compelling persuasion… 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.”

Every Indian generation after independence has been nurtured on the diet of these comfortable fictions.

The second analysis is by Dwarka Prasad Mishra—freedom fighter and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister—in his autobiog­raphy. He was an eyewitness and victim of and a crusader against British colonial rule.

“Almost invariably, with the disappearance of the [colonial] rulers… unity and security also vanish. This is what actually hap­pened in India as the British started leaving. The ‘gift’ of unity departed with the advent of independence…[This] was admitted by Mountbatten when he told Kuldip Nayar in 1971 in London that ‘wherever colonial rule has ended, bloodshed has been there’ and ‘this is the price you pay.’ The unprecedented butchery in the northwest demonstrated that the transfer of power has been wrongly characterized as peaceful inasmuch as India had to fight for its survival in the very hour of its birth as an independent nation.”

That the Partition of India is one of the bloodiest episodes in human history is well-known. But there was another kind of conse­quence that followed the British transfer of power, which has all but been forgotten. This was the looming threat to the physical safety of large parts of northern India, including but not limited to Kashmir. The combined forces of the so-called two-nation theory which had ultimately wrested Pakistan had tasted blood. And were thirsty for more. This time, they set their ambition higher. They would capture Delhi itself. It was a preface to Kasim Razvi’s fanatical 1948 speech in Hyderabad in which he urged his “brave Razakars to plant the victorious flag of Islam atop the Red Fort.”

The new leaders of the new Pakistan had calculated that because India was busy grappling with countless problems in the aftermath of the Partition, they could launch a surprise invasion and seize Delhi. The plan was actually set in motion and was executed from within India by Indian Muslims and it could have well succeeded but for the steely intervention of the vigilant Sardar Patel.

Here is the story of this attempted siege of Delhi that took place in September 1947, barely a month after Partition.

Some of the major primary sources that narrate this tale include VP Menon’s The Transfer of Power in India, Durga Das’ fine volume, India from Curzon to Nehru and After, Mohandas Gandhi’s secretary Pyarelal’s Mahatma Gandhi—The Last Phase Vol 2 and DP Mishra’s autobiography. It is also mentioned in Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre’s Freedom at Midnight, a selective and spurious rendering of the history of the Indian freedom struggle.

The story begins with the report of an intelligence official named Rai Bahadur Bakshi Badri Nath, who was closely monitoring the Muslim League’s activities in northwestern India—especially Punjab, Haryana and Delhi, all in the throes of suffering and chaos in the aftermath of the Partition riots. In his book, Durga Das summarises the main thrust of Badri Nath’s report: “…[There was] a con­spiracy to extend Pakistan’s boundary up to Jamuna. When the administrative changeover took place, every East Punjab district had a predominantly Muslim constabulary, and the Leaguers decided that they should capture the police armouries between 12th and 14th August, kill the Hindu and Sikh officers and declare the area independent of India.”

VP Menon (Sardar Patel’s trusted aide tasked with the integration of the princely states into the new Indian Union) phrases the same thing differently: “While panic-stricken refugees poured into the city of Delhi, the capital buzzed with rumours of a deep-laid, long-prepared Muslim conspiracy to overthrow the new Government of free India and to seize the capital.”

On the other hand, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appeared to be not only deaf to this dastardly news but displayed astounding naïveté. Unlike Patel, Nehru actually believed that he could convince his old friend, Liaquat Ali Khan, who would dissuade his fanatics from their attempted capture of Delhi.

The first stirrings of this siege began when Gandhi arrived in Delhi from Calcutta at Nehru’s request. It was Nehru’s desper­ate hope that Gandhi’s saintly presence would calm down the charged tempers in the capital. During the course of his visits to inquire after the well-being of the refugees, Gandhi went to the Irwin Hospital (now Lok Nayak Hospital). The moment he de­parted, there was a rapid hail of bullets on the hospital leaving large holes in its walls and shattering its windows.

The bullets came from three buildings opposite the hospital. The first was from the office of the Muslim League’s official newspaper Dawn. The second was from a building that housed fanatical Mus­lim League members. The third was from a mosque adjacent to it.

The moment he heard the news, Sardar Patel knew that he had a warlike situation on hand, and instantly swung into action. His po­lice combed the whole area, searching the Dawn office, the mosque and all Muslim houses and recovered a massive stash of stenguns, rifles, revolvers, mortars, grenades and wireless transmitter sets.

The worst fears expressed by the Intelligence department about Pakistan’s design to capture Delhi had rung true with this incident. Patel was also faced with another challenge—a worrying paucity of the police force. VP Menon supplies the reason for this shortage of police troops: “Many of…the Muslim officers who were drawn from the Punjab had opted to serve Pakistan. Their withdrawal caused an almost crippling depletion of the officer cadre…It was particularly essential that Delhi should be saved from the impending chaos at whatever cost. Danger to the capital meant a threat to the very exis­tence of the nascent dominion. It was clear that some extraordinary and forceful action was necessary…”

Always ready to face a challenge head-on, Patel convened an Emergency Committee and summoned Mountbatten from Shim­la. This instance is a telling commentary on the character of British rule. Since his arrival in India, Mountbatten had made himself in­dispensable to both Congress and the Muslim League. And now, Nehru and Sardar Patel reasoned that his presence in Delhi would be enough of a deterrence to the mischief-makers in Pakistan.

The Emergency Committee comprised 15 members, includ­ing cabinet ministers, the commander-in-chief, representatives of the supreme command, the chief commissioner of Delhi, the inspector-general of police, the director-general of civil aviation and members of the medical department, railways and some co-opted members. Mountbatten was nominated as its chairman. Its first meeting was held early in the morning on September 6, 1947 in Mountbatten’s study.

Sardar Patel was the unanimous choice to lead the whole op­eration. His polar opponent, Nehru, also conceded that “you are the strongest pillar of the cabinet.” DP Mishra, an indirect partici­pant in the action, makes his admiration for Patel clear: “When Patel went into action to avert the danger to Delhi his mood was as grim as the situation itself.”

Unlike both Gandhi and Nehru, Patel neither had woolly-headed illusions about Pakistan nor was he scared to take ruthless action, including but not limited to force. Sardar Patel put several things into motion simultaneously. He gave carte blanche to all the armed forces and the police. He wrote to the chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and other states to send their police force to Delhi. DP Mishra, the then home minister of Mad­hya Pradesh, was one such recipient of Patel’s letter.

Each day, Patel personally toured the streets of Delhi to monitor the situation. Pyarelal recounts a particular incident, which among other things, shows why the Sardar was regarded as India’s Iron Man. “…one day he found that firing had been going on incessantly from a building occupied by the Muslims for the last twenty-four hours. ‘Why has this pocket not been cleared?’ he asked a high-ranking military officer accompanying him. The latter replied that this was not possible with the force at their disposal unless they blew up the building. ‘Then why didn’t you do it?’ the Sardar snapped!”

It was all they needed. The threat was quelled in a matter of days and Patel had crushed the potential siege of Delhi—planned in Paki­stan and executed by the members of the Muslim League in India.

But there are two unflattering footnotes to Sardar Patel’s vic­tory. The first comes from the pen of the selfsame DP Mishra. “… what is regrettable is that the steps taken by [Patel] to save the capital from chaos did not meet with the approval of Gandhi, Nehru and Azad …it becomes difficult to avoid the impression that while he was waging a war against India’s enemies he was also being hampered by constant criticism from those who were expected to aid him.”

The second footnote is more recent. Sardar Patel wouldn’t have foreseen a future reality of a Batla House episode wherein his own party’s government, remote-controlled by a foreigner, would sympathise with Muslim terrorists out to do the same thing that Pakistan had done in his time.

attempted siege of DelhiBritish colonialismCongressIndian freedom struggleJawaharlal NehruLord MountbattenSardar Vallabhbhai Patel