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Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India

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The book is outstanding for many reasons: It is written in an easy style that would force you to read it one go, quite rarely seen in books covering history. Yet the book has sufficient background research that can only be expected from UCLA's professor of history. It has a balanced presentation of facts by a scholar far removed by geography and time from the events.

Stanley Wolpert provides some interesting insights:

British rule of India is a tale of incompetence:

In 1943, India produced 50 million tons of food grains - enough to feed its population of 400 million. Yet 1.5 million people died of starvation in Bengal that year primarily due to mismanagement.

Bengal's governor Herbert and Viceroy Lord Wavell pleaded for food grains to be sent to Bengal. Britain's war transport minister Baron Frederick James Leathers kept 6 million tons stored in ships in Indian Ocean unused. Wavell's report to London says "the famine in Bengal was largely due to ministerial incompetence".

The incompetence was acknowledged in London as well. Churchill's Secretary of State for India Leopold Amery confesses in a private letter to the Viceroy Linlithgow "nothing has convinced me more than the Cabinet meetings.... of the fundamental incapacity of a British cabinet to try and govern India".

Viceroy Wavell condemns Churchill four years later after sitting in one cabinet meeting: "He hates India and everything to do with it. Winston knows as much of the Indian problem as George III did of the American colonies!"


British rule of India is a tale of political insensitivity.

The best example of this insensitivity is Winston Churchill's peevish telegram to his Viceroy asking "why Gandhi has not died yet?" after releasing the Mahatma from prison because of medical conditions. Not a class-act in international politics.


Partition could have been avoided with greater wisdom in Indian/British leadership.

In 1937 provincial elections the Congress won clear majority in six of the eleven provinces. Jinnah's Muslim league failed to win a single province. Jinnah appealed to Nehru to agree to coalition ministries in the multicultural provinces. Nehru refused and retorted that there were only two parties left: "the British and the Congress". Jinnah devoted the next ten years to create Pakistan. If Nehru had pursued an "inclusive style of politics" there would have been no opportunity to "divide and rule".

1946 offered another opportunity to unite. British Secretary of State, Lord Pethick Lawrence advocated a coalition cabinet (made up of Congress and Muslim League) that decides by consensus and not by majority vote. Nehru declined to cede parity to Muslim league and share power. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad sadly reflected in his autobiography that "Jawaharlal's mistake in 1937 had been bad enough. The mistake of 1946 proved even more costly". This resolved Jinnah to insist on partition.

Britain played the "divide and rule" card to the long term detriment of India. Viceroys were quick to ignore good examples. Chief Ministers Sikandar Hayat Khan and Fazl-i-Husain governed Punjab province by using local patriotism and common language to unify the multi-religious constituency. It was the same Punjab that recorded the largest death triggered by inept governing.


British rule had no strategy to deal with partition.

Britain, as a colonial ruler, has a history of shameful behaviour. In 1942, when Britain exited Burma "the civil administration suddenly collapsed and those in charge sought their own safety. Private motor cars were commandeered for the evacuation of Europeans, leaving their owners stranded. .... The city of Rangoon was left at the mercy of .... hardened criminals". There was no thought for life after British rule.

Months ahead of Indian independence British staff were evacuated to Britain leaving no credible law enforcement mechanism for the infant governments of India and Pakistan to deal with the migration induced violence and death.

Mountbatten was aware of the likely violence and the lack of a plan to deal with this. Though Cyril Radcliffe's maps with the boundary lines of India and Pakistan were ready earlier, Mountbatten kept it under lock and key until the pageantry, splendor and photo opportunities of Indpendence day and the British could no more be blamed for the violence or the ineptitude with which it was handled. His reasoning: "the earlier it was published, the more the British would have to bear the responsibility for the disturbances which would undoubtedly result". Reasonable opportunity to manage the migration was denied for the sake of glory.

Says Bengal Secretary John Dawson Tyson, "Mountbatten's focus was on withdrawal in fairly peaceful conditions..... the India after 15 August will not be the kind of country I should want to live in"

Rear Admiral Viscount Lord Louis Francis Albert Victor Mountbatten expressed what he thought about the way he had done his job in India to BBC's John Osmon in 1965. Thirty nine years later Osman says that though he dislikes using vulgar slang, the only honest way of reporting accurately what the last Viceroy said was "I fu....d it up".

Stanley Wolpert concludes that both India and Pakistan are still saddled with the bitter legacies of Great Britain's hasty, shameful flight.

Excellent book.

I expected more from this book. There were 3 clear errors in the Introduction which unfortunately slipped through :
1. At page 4 there was a statement that the Lieutenant Governor Michael O'Dwyer issued the infamous `crawling orders' of Amritsar. This is incorrect. The order was issued by Brigadier-General REH Dyer. (see page 50 of The Hunter Committee's Report on The Amritsar Massacre,1919- General Dyer in the Punjab © The Stationery Office 2000 )
2. At page 5 commenting on Gandhi's rationale for his famous "salt march" it was stated that millions of India's poorest peasants required salt to survive India's intense heat. Salt is a basic necessity of life but it is not required to survive intense heat . ( see page 61 INDIRA-The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi by Katherine Frank ©2001 )
3. At page 14 there was a statement that the British ships Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by Japanese suicide and torpedo bombers. The Japanese only introduced the kamikaze suicide planes in Oct 1944 in the battle for the Philippines. ( see page 776 A World At Arms by Gerhard Weinberg 1994 ed.)

The book is more a narrative than an analysis. Facts are presented mainly based on the British records compiled in The Transfer of Power volumes. It is unfortunate such facts and opinions were not tested against the records of the Indian nationalists. I finished this book with the knowledge of the author's case for the culpability of Lord Mountbatten for the Partition and the numerous deaths that followed but with my thirst for a fuller picture insatiated.

This book can be summed up as a comprehensive compendium of events that took place before the partition of the Indian sub-continent. As someone from India, I really appreciated the research of the author in bringing these facts to light. History lessons in school are almost always over-simplified and it is only through books like this that we see the leaders in flesh and blood.

After finishing this book, I have gained a renewed sense of how inevitable partition of the sub-continent was - the fissures between the 2 major communities, accentuated by 900 years of warfare, were too deep to be puttied over. It was also disheartening to read how divisive the so-called 'great leaders' were - a recurring feature of Indian politics is the lack of collective discipline and it was no different at the time of partition.

As another reviewer remarked, this book is solely written from a British perspective and so it is definitely not multi-dimensional. This maybe a short book, but the style is terse and academic, and the text is heavy with references. There are also no lurid details of the massacres or any detailed anecdotes (like in 'Freedom at Midnight') and because of the absence of personal stories, this book would appeal more to the history student than to the general public.

Stanely Wolpert has written several admirable books on Indian history in the past. Unfortunately this book is a disappointment.

The book has many flaws and biased scholarship. The primary flaw is that it has tunnel vision. The author presents a snap shot of the events in India beginning with Scripps' mission in 1942 continuing through to death of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. By 1942, British rule has been in existence for one hundred and eighty years and the Indian National Congress has been in existence for nearly sixty years. Congress had been fighting for total self rule for India for well over forty years. By focusing only on a brief period and ignoring what happened before and after the author falters in his task as an objective historian.

The next flaw is that the author makes a misguided effort to salvage the Jinnah's place in history. There is no question Jinnah was a brilliant lawyer and a politician but it must be recognized that he was an egomaniac, took up a communal platform and promoted violence to achieve his goals. The region is still suffering the consequences of the division of the Indian subcontinent. The author does not offer a single critical word about Jinnah's actions to divide the country nor about his "Direct Action" that made the streets of Calcutta killing fields in 1946. Nehru's India became a secular democracy with people of different faiths living in relative harmony while Jinnah's Pakistan became an Islamic Republic and drove out most of the Hindus and Sikhs living in its territory. Today many regard Pakistan as a source of modern global terrorism

Professor Wolpert omitted any discussion of the mischief done by the Viceroy Linlithgow prior to the period of interest in the book. The Viceroy signed up India into the World War II without any consultation with the provincial ministries or the local polity. This led to the resignation of Congress ministers which suited the viceroy fine since he could roll back the reforms of 1935 India Act and impose his autocratic rule across the country. With Congress ministries out of power he cultivated Jinnah to stake claim for a separate state for Muslims, a state which Britain could use later as a base to continue its military influence in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent in the event of the end British rule in India. It was in this environment that Stafford Cripps was sent to India with a proposal for power transfer.

Scripp's mission was doomed to failure since Churchill had no intention of giving up India and agreed to the mission only as an eyewash to appease President Roosevelt who was pushing for Indian freedom. Churchill included the "opt out" clause in the proposal, a tacit scheme for Pakistan, knowing well it would not be accepted by Congress. The mission failure led Congress to the "Quit India" movement which was brutally put down and the entire Congress leadership imprisoned for the duration of the war. The resulting environment helped the Viceroy to nurture Jinnah to put a monkey wrench in the Congress plans and keep the Pakistan issue growing.

The author has no criticism for Jinnah for dividing India while he has loud criticism for dividing Bengal and Punjab and blames puts the blame on Nehru and Patel. By his selective criticism of the the divisions of Punjab and Bengal while remaining silent on the division of India the book looses its credibility as an objective scholarship.

The chapter on Kashmir is full of distortions and half truths. The reader is better off to skip this chapter. There are much better and objective resources on the subject elsewhere ("The Shadow of Great Game" by Narendra Singh Sarila).

The amount of criticism leveled against Mountbatten is unjustified. While it is true that all the unfortunate killings happened in Punjab and Bengal under his administration it is to Mountbatten's credit that Indian freedom and British disengagement could happen in a meaningfully graceful and timely manner given the realities on the ground. It is also to his credit that he encouraged the princes to join either Indian Union or Pakistan thereby avoiding a potentially disastrous balkanization..

The author refers to Subhas Chandra Bose as "Japan's puppet leader" with no justification. Today it is widely recognized in India that Bose's Indian National Army helped raise the national self esteem and called the British bluff of racial superiority for what it was, thus accelerating their exit. Bose's contribution towards independence was no less than that of Gandhi or Nehru.

Overall, this is a biased and flawed scholarship.

This isn't a bad book but its central proposion is wrong for two reasons. It overestimates what the British could have done in the situation and absolves the responsibility of those in India and Pakistan who contributed greatly to what happened.

What the author fails to understand is that by 1942 the British no longer had any power to influence events in India or Palestine or anywhere else. The empire had been reduced to a giant bluff that could only be sustained by those ruled by it not questioning or challenging its power. When the Japanese arrived at India's doorstep in 1942, the British had neither navy, air force or troops to defend it with. All that saved British India in that year was the Japanese being focused elsewhere.

The idea that Partition might have been avoided is once again floated. But looking back, one can hardly imagine a worse situation today than an India with a even larger Muslim population attempting to rule the tribal areas of what is now Pakistan. Hindu bashing is quite fashionable today and while some might suggest that Nehru might have preserved India by surrender to Jinnah's demands, those who suggest it are naive. Muslim leaders in India had unrealistic expectations of their place in society based on British and pre-British empires where they held power as a minority over the hindu population. But no post-independence could possibly tolerate the idea of keeping Muslim privildge in place. It had to go and the price of letting it go was the creation of Pakistan.

By the time of partition, the British lacked the money, the national will and the manpower to do anything in India. Their real goal was to get out without being shot at by both sides. Their game in the end was a bluff and it worked about as well as it could in the circumstances. The author also seems not to understand that a large section of public opinion wanted the British gone. It didn't want them hanging around running things after independence. It certainly didn't want to British to continue controlling the police or running the administration.

The basic fault of this woork is that the author does not understand that the British had no alternative to what they did. They could not hold back independence for years or even months to find a better solution because veryeone in India wanted them gone. They could hardly have opened fire on demonstrators or put down riots by force. And if they had tried to force a united india, that united India would have had a Hindu government, a moajority muslim army and all the right conditions for either a military coup or national civil war. As horrible as partition was, it is far from the worst thing that could have happened. Look next door at the mess in BUrma since the 1940s for a lesson in what happens when you force people to be one country.

The book is well researched by its basic proposition is wrong. The author neded to understand the British situation better and hold the other parties more accountable for their own actions.

Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India
At its peak, India was the "Crown in the Jewel" of the British Empire. A mere 1,500 British Civil Servants created the infrastructure which ruled hundreds of millions of Indians. Indians themselves built a comprehensive railroad network, an educational system, and contributed to the defense of the empire.
But with the end of World War II, British control of Southern Asia was threatened by advancing Japanese troops. With the fall of Singapore in 1942, the British lost their key strategic foothold in the Malay Peninsula. Winston Churchill called Singapore's loss the greatest tragedy in England's history....but it was followed closely by the ignominious exit of the British from India and its partition into present-day India and Pakistan.

This is the background to "Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India" by Stanley Wolpert. Using primary sources, Wolpert does an excellent job of revealing the individual responsibility of various British Viceroys and administrators, culminating with the brief administration of Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of British India and First Governor-General of Independent India. Mountbatten (who was later killed in an IRA assassination) acknowledged that he badly misjudged the ethnic and religious diversity of India. The Partition resulted in the deaths of forced relocation of hundreds of thousands ...perhaps millions... of Hindu and Muslim Indians.

This book helps fill in the blanks of Indian history. It would be best supplemented by "Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia 1941-45" by Christopher Bayly, and by "India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy" by Guha.

Previous knowledge of the history of the region is helpful to better appreciate this book. Even if you don't have extensive knowledge surrounding India's independence, the book is still a startling reminder of how a "cut and run" policy can have disastrous consequences. Most of the major players in the book, whether British, Indian, or Pakistani come out looking unimpressive, so I don't really see there being a question of author bias. I highly recommend this book in view of the current events in Iraq as there are some striking parallels.

First of all, one reviewer is correct in saying that the writing style of this book is terse. Its definitely a chore to read. Its only 200 pages and its taking me weeks to read it, at times reading it can be a form of self punishment, but thats generally how diplomatic history is written, so its to be expected.
Without going into too much detail, the thing that makes this book an absolute must own, is how the story laid out is almost a direct blow for blow pretelling of the Iraq war fiasco. Churchill's fears of the chaos and loss of prestige that will result from the British leaving is straight out of todays headlines, I was in fact quite surprised never to have read the words "precipitate withdrawal" in the book.Thats only one of many example, but theres no avoiding the direct and obvious historical parallels between 1940's India and todays Iraq. Of course there are no Sihks or Hindus in Iraq, but if you read the book and you didnt know any better, you'd swear this guy was making the story up right out of todays headlines.

Wolpert, a great admirer of Jinnah is probably the best known western proponent of the alternative analysis of partition of India. The theory goes that Jinnah's hand was forced by the Indian National Congress ( Especially Nehru and Patel). Many Pakistanis, (Akber and Jalal being two fixtures in intellectual circles) have taken it further and peddled it in the west for a while.

The premise of Wolpert's thesis itself is a problem. Drawing equivalence between Congress and Muslim League is tantamount to drawing a parallel between the current European/American polity and the current Islamic polity ( Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim brotherhood). In fact, the later does refer to the former as "Christian states" and does exactly the same. His thesis would be perfectly valid if League was in negotiations with "Hindu Mahasabha" or the "RSS" not congress.

Wolpert bemoans Nehru's refusal to allow Jinnah and the League to be the "sole spokesman" for Muslims ( Sole Spokesman is actually the title of Pakistani historian Jalal's book) but underplays the fact that a significant minority of Muslims especially among the working classes were congress followers.

Wolpert is really infatuated by Jinnah. In eulogizing Jinnah's speech made on August 11 1947, ( you are free to go to your whatever places of worship) he editorializes that Jinnah was "completely sincere" ( a little bird told Wolpert, you see,) absolving Jinnah of the last 20 years of communal politics where he cultivated and encouraged bigots. He slides in the pettiness of Nehru calling Jinnah a "Mediocre Lawyer" ( which Nehru was, Jinnah was not!) and then makes it a point to tell his reader that he was in fact a brilliant one.
This reminds me of the baptist preacher in southern Tennessee proclaiming that you could have sinned all you want but you come and accept JC as your Saviour and all is forgotten and forgiven

Wolpert feels India would have been better with three or four dominions ( like greater Bengal). but he is incorrect. Just look at what has happened to the minority Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh... Islam is pretty clear on what to do with the minorities.

In "softly advocating" greater Bengal Wolpert cries over the fact that the Muslims are deprived of all the economic and educational advantages Hindu West Bengal would bring to make the east viable. Very convenient way of "taxing secular Bose to pay Muslim Surhawardy"! Why not the educational and political sophistication of Muslim elites that migrated and why not the economic might of Pakistani Punjab? Was that not the "two nation theory"? Does not matter what ethnicity or what language, Muslims are one nation? In fact he spin's Jinnah's acquiescence to this "greater Bengal" idea as "flexibility" of the "Quaid". It in fact was a cunning ploy to get "more for the Muslims" even at the expense of contradicting with his Two Nation theory.


Why two stars and not zero?
Because the events themselves are engaging. Wolpert's narrative is well written. He correctly points out the incompetence of the British in executing the partition. ( which is what book's title "shameful flight" aptly suggests) But that occupies only a small part of the book. Most of his musing are about how the partition came about and not how it was implemented.

Even in Wolpert's synthesis sympathetic to Jinnah, he stands out as a shrewd political mind who played a weak hand brilliantly. Even his editorializing of "Mahatma's" wisdom, it becomes pretty clear how impracticable Gandhi was and how he was about to hand the whole of India on a platter to Jinnah to feed his Megalomania.

It makes it pretty clear that Jinnah started with a position so outrageously "maximum" that even what he called a "moth eaten Pakistan" was pretty darn good deal he got.

The book also brings forth the effective "teamwork" between Nehru, Patel and Azad. Any one of them was probably not half as cunning as Jinnah was and not even close to the Tory ( Linlithgow, Wavell, Amrey) administrators were; but together they could see through their machinations.

Wolpert should be the "Patron Saint" of Pakistani historians.. (if he already is not)

This is an atrocious book, a complete abrogation of scholarship in favour of prejudiced argument. Even by the most generous interpretation of Wolpert's own arguments as laid out in the book, the only conclusion which can be drawn is that India, and Indians were poorly served by their political masters. Dare one say now that Ghandi himself is the most obvious candidate for censure? Nehru and Jinnah hardly come out of Wolpert's text smelling of roses either, but Ghandi struck me as the one most culpable for the subsequent debacle, and again, that is from a reading of Wolpert's own arguments in this book.

Had the obduracy and perfidiousness of Ghandi not got in the way during the 1942 and 1946 Cripps missions to India, it is plain (and even Wolpert writes this) that a settlement could have been reached which would have enabled a peaceful handover. No attempt at all is made to understand or censure Ghandi's behaviour. As far as Wolpert is concerned, effectively "it was all the fault of those damned Brits".

Yet had an agreement been reached in 1946, the entirety of what follows in Wolpert's book would have been irrelevant. There would likely have been no Mountbatten to "foul(sic) things up" (Wolpert's use of language, not mine), as it is unlikely that Wavell would have been in replaced. A peaceful handover of power was within the grasp of Indian politicians in 1946, but they fumbled and dropped the ball. There can be no doubt that the inter-communal violence of 1947 onwards had its roots in the failure of contemporary Indian political leadership, even accepting that India would have been a different place had it never been colonised.
It could easily be argued that, had an agreement been reached between Congress and the Muslim League, then Wavell's presence as a stabilising figure and soldier would have eased the subsequent transition.

Wolpert makes no mention at all of the quite improper relationship which took place between Lady Mountbatten and Nehru. None. How can a study of India 1942-1947 omit this? Are we to conclude that Wolpert either did not know of it (unlikely), or that he chose to omit it as irrelevant? If the latter, how we can read this book and treat its conclusions with any seriousness? Either way, the absence of any comment on it seriously undermines the books' credibility as an authoritative read.

No attempt was made by Wolpert to set the decision making of the British from 1945 onwards in any kind of context. No mention was made of the pressures on Attlee et al., or of British post-war weakness - military and financially. The fact that many of those pressures were coming directly from the United States seems to have passed Wolpert by. In focussing so narrowly on India, he loses sight of the bigger picture facing the UK, the USA and the world at that time, much of which is needed to understand and explain contemporary decision making.

I have no doubt mistakes were made on the British side, but I have never read any evidence of maliciousness on the part of anyone involved, either in London or the colonial administration in Simla and Delhi.

This book is quite simply an anti-colonial rant by a clearly Anglophobe American. If this is what passes for scholarship at the history faculty of UCLA, remind me never to employ anyone with a UCLA history degree! One star for drawing research together, but that is all I can credit this book with. The complete lack of objectivity in analysis destroys its main purpose, and therefore value.