VP Menon by Narayani Basu

Author:Narayani Basu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S India
Published: 2020-02-05T16:00:00+00:00

43

The Menon Plan

“WHEN I GOT to Viceregal Lodge, Lady Mountbatten was there, in the study, holding her husband’s hand. I could see from their faces that this was disaster.”543 Still, Mountbatten tried to brazen it out. He wasn’t sorry he had shown the plan to Jawaharlal, he said. Imagine what would have happened had he gone ahead with the conference of 17 May anyway! The question was, how did one now retrieve this situation? “I told him, ‘Sir, you have never listened to me before, but I beg of you to please listen to me now.’”544 VP repeated his Plan, modifying it according to what he had heard from both Mountbatten and Nehru. He now urged the Viceroy to think about Partition seriously, because it was the only way to ensure both the early demission of power, and as a result, obtain Congress approval. The only obstacle, as always, was Jinnah. Would he accept a mutilated version of his dream? “I reminded Lord Mountbatten that he himself had gained the impression that Jinnah was reconciled to the idea of partition of the Punjab and Bengal. Whereas the Plan approved by His Majesty’s Government would break up the country into several units, my Plan would retain the essential unity of India, while allowing those areas to secede which did not choose to remain part of it.”545

There was nothing else Mountbatten could do, at least not in the face of the stingingly eloquent letter Nehru had just sent him. Nehru was summoned for a mid-morning meeting, to which he arrived, still protesting violently. Mountbatten heard him out patiently, then signalled to VP. “We explained to him how our new Plan would meet his objections,” VP remembered. “But I could not tell him that Sardar approved of the bulk of it—especially Partition—because Panditji might have thought that I was hiding things from him.”546 Nehru listened suspiciously, but at last commented that though it sounded fine to him, he couldn’t commit his colleagues to the Plan without their approval. However, he said, he wanted to see it in writing. All right, Mountbatten said, a draft would be ready for him to see by 6 pm. It was at this point that a qualm struck VP. It was already lunchtime—1.30 pm or thereabouts, he would recall. Nehru was leaving for Delhi at 7 pm that very evening. That left VP with precisely four hours in which to produce a draft compelling and comprehensive enough to determine the future of India, and to change the history of South Asia forever. “I know people have said of me that VP always had the Plan ready,” he told Hodson, years later. “But at that time, what did I have? I had nothing. I had a few notes and some essential points scribbled on some sheets of paper.”547

VP had worked under immense pressure before, but this was something else. India’s political future had been decided in a matter of three hectic hours, between 7 am and 10.30 am that morning.

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