Journey with a fallout - Nehru's Singapore trip to see INA soldiers had unexpected results

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1141206/jsp/opinion/story_2217.jsp#.VIKWhjGUfb4

Sunanda K. Datta-Ray

As soon as World War II ended, Jawaharlal Nehru announced he would visit Singapore to see for himself how Lord Louis Mountbatten's British Military Administration treated Indian National Army prisoners. This was in addition to the two propitiatory gestures - donning his barrister's gown to defend INA personnel in the Red Fort trial and speaking warmly of Subhas Chandra Bose on his birthday in 1946 - Rudrangshu Mukherjee mentions in Nehru & Bose: Parallel Lives. The visit had momentous consequences for India. It also produced a revelation about Nehru's personal life that, if true, was equally momentous.

Before discussing that fallout, let me say that when I read of Nehru's decision, I assumed he was playing to the gallery. The tension in the "tension-fraught and passing friendship" between the two men Mukherjee describes loomed larger in the public mind than the friendship. Netaji had captured the nation's imagination. Most Indians thought INA prisoners were victimized heroes. Even though on Mountbatten's advice Nehru later refused to reinduct them into the regular army, he obviously deemed it politically advisable to court them then.

Sir Hubert Elvin Rance, Burma's last British governor, refused to grant Nehru transit facilities. Air Vice-Marshall L.F. Pendred, the BMA's intelligence chief, thought his request "should be refused". Officials of the Supreme Allied Command, South-East Asia decided to make things uncomfortable if Nehru insisted on visiting. He wouldn't get official transport. He wouldn't be allowed to meet INA personnel. Even regular Indian troops would be confined to barracks. His presence would be played down in every way.

They reckoned without Mountbatten who scolded the BMA for not realizing Nehru was "one of the most important political figures in the world". Rejecting him "would invite worldwide criticism which Nehru would not fail to exploit". Mountbatten also told S.K. Chettur, British India's representative in Singapore, Nehru was "a man of honour" and would not embarrass him "by carrying out any agitational activities". Inviting Nehru "as an official representative of the All-India Congress", Mountbatten flattered him with almost head of government honours. Two senior British staff officers received him at Singapore's Kallang airport with Brigadier J.N. (Muchu) Chaudhuri, later India's Chief of the Army Staff, whom Mountbatten had appointed Nehru's personal aide. Chaudhuri took the Congress leader through about 2,000 men in INA uniform with tricolour badges (courtesy Mountbatten) to Government House (today's presidential palace or Istana) where India's future (and last) viceroy entertained India's future (and first) prime minister to tea. They hadn't met before.

Mountbatten and Nehru then "rode in state" in an open car past the 300 INA men who had marched to Government House shouting revolutionary slogans, to the Indian YMCA Welfare Centre in Stamford Road. Edwina waited there with Indian Red Cross workers. Singapore's Tamil Murasu newspaper called it "the neatest diplomatic stroke and so casually executed that Lord Louis Mountbatten displayed real genius". The cheering crowds included many "former Indian soldiers" (euphemism for INA personnel who were technically rebels) whose "Nehru ji ki jai!" was laced with cries of "Lord Louis Mountbattenki jai!" setting the precedent for Delhi in 1947.

Mountbatten records that meanwhile a "seething and bubbling mass ... just boiled all round the YMCA". As he and Nehru entered the building, "a roar as of a dam bursting fell upon our ears, and the crowd burst through every door and window... in no time they were upon us". Edwina was knocked down and disappeared under the mob. "The Pandit screaming: 'Your wife; your wife; we must go to her,' linked arms with me and together we charged into the crowd in an endeavour to find her. Meanwhile, she had crawled between the people's legs and had come out at the far end of the room, got on a table and shouted to us that she was all right".

Nehru's account of this "unusual introduction" to Edwina sounded almost prosaic. Writing to Dorothy Norman 17 years later he mentioned "a wild rush of Indian soldiers, presumably wanting to see me". Edwina had disappeared. "I think I got up on a chair to have a look around. Soon Lady Mountbatten crawled out of the milling crowd. She had evidently been knocked down by the soldiers rushing in." Lady Pamela Hicks believes her mother and Nehru fell deeply in love in Singapore but the relationship remained platonic.

Mountbatten gave a small dinner party that evening for Nehru who told "Chaudhuri on his way back he hadn't enjoyed an evening with English people so much since he had come down from Oxford (actually, Nehru was at Cambridge) more than 30 years ago". Nehru agreed when Mountbatten asked him not to lay a wreath at the INA's war memorial "since they had fought not only against us but against the local people of Malaya". Mountbatten "found him most reasonable" though, despite his promise, Nehru "slipped away quietly the following day and left his personal wreath" - roses Singaporeans thought he had bought for Edwina - at the memorial. This was a wooden replica of the original monument Mountbatten had destroyed. It was hastily erected on the same spot and quickly dismantled after Nehru's car left and the 300-strong crowd dispersed. Nehru also did his duty by Bose by instructing a prominent local lawyer, Radhakrishna Ramani, to see to the INA's legal needs.

Obviously, the wooden replica could not have been built and dismantled so swiftly without Mountbatten's consent. He befriended Nehru, hoping to convince ardent nationalists "that one who fraternized openly with representatives of the British Raj was a bit of a Quisling". That might also temper Nehru's radicalism. Both calculations seemed fulfilled in Singapore's Jalan Besar Stadium where thousands of Malays, Chinese (including communists) and Indonesians with banners and flags supported INA troops flaunting tricolour flags, a large portrait of Netaji in military attire, uniformed guards of honour and a brass band playing Azad Hind tunes. The British feared hostile rioting but Nehru saved the day. He rebuked the crowd for chanting the INA's "Blood! Blood! Blood!" slogan, saying Netaji had done great work but the time had come to abandon "provocative and unwise" rhetoric for peaceful, disciplined and constructive effort. The British were delighted when disappointed soldiers drifted away from the stadium. Mountbatten gloated, "Altogether we must have stolen part of the old boy's thunder, besides publicly linking him up with us ..."

All this I read when researching Looking East to Look West: Lee Kuan Yew's Mission India. Apart from conventional source material, Singapore's president, Sellapan Rama Nathan, gave me a cloth bag stuffed with British archival papers no one had examined. Nathan formerly headed Singapore's security and intelligence division, and many of the documents were intelligence reports. Among them was an "off the record" note prepared by SACSEA's Wing Commander, Alan Campbell-Johnson, for Nehru's visit. Campbell-Johnson had learnt when he was in India writing Lord Irwin's biography that "when Jawaharlal, a Brahmin, married a Moslem woman, jeopardizing his whole position within the Hindu social system, it was Gandhi's personal intervention as a religious leader which saved him from the full consequences of his action". Calling the marriage and its suppression "the most formative event in Nehru's life", Campbell-Johnson expressed surprise Nehru hadn't mentioned them in An Autobiography, which was praised as "the most perfect piece of self-revelation since Rousseau's Confessions".

Since I have seen no other mention of a clandestine marriage, I wonder if Campbell-Johnson confused Nehru with his sister. Vijayalakshmi's involvement with Sayed Hussein, the handsome, aristocratic, Calcutta-born British-educated editor of Motilal Nehru's paper, the Independent, and later India's first ambassador to Egypt, was no secret. But if the information was true, it would have given Mountbatten a powerful hold over Nehru which, combined with the Edwina link, made the visit crucial for India. Paraphrasing Mukherjee, Subhas would have smiled from the Valhalla of heroes at the irony of this unintended consequence of his INA's Singapore adventure.