September 6, 1947

The dawn of independence in 1947 not only brought cheers and smiles on the faces of Indians, but also threw lot of challenges at our political leadership which was at the helm of affairs at that time. Exactly 68 years ago one such challenge came straight into the faces of Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar patel. The day was September 6, 1947. The partition had thrown open a can of worms and communal riots and violence on the streets of Delhi were threatening to bring down the capital itself. The situation in Punjab had become worse and the magnitude of migration on the borders was beyond anyone’s imagination.

On this day the most closely guarded meeting in the history of India’s political scene was held between three gentlemen.  Had the outcome of this meeting become public at that time, it would have proved catastrophic for the political career of both Sardar Patel and Jawahar Lal Nehru.

There were three gentlemen present in this meeting. Apart from India’s two greatest leaders, the other person present was the last viceroy of India, Louis Mountbatten. In this meeting these two leaders expressed their inability to control the situation and how they and their people were inexperienced to handle this huge catastrophe.

In freedom of Midnight, Dominique lapierre quotes Nehru who told Mountbatten that, “We have no experience. We have spent the best years of our lives in your jails. Our experience is in the art of agitation, not administration. We can barely manage to run a well organized government in normal circumstances. We are just not up to facing an absolute collapse of law and order”.

Louis Mountbatten sitting in chair in his magnificent study had no Idea till then what Nehru was going to say to him. All he could do was to listen patiently. Nehru had always admired Mountbatten’s administrative and leadership skills. Nehru and Patel who had devoted all their lives to India’s struggle for independence were about to make a startling proposal to Mountbatten and that was to once again take over the responsibility of running the country.

As Dominique lapierre would write in his book later, Mountbatten was aghast. ‘My God’, he said, ‘I’ have just got through giving you the country and here you two are asking me to take it back. However both Nehru and Patel kept on insisting. Mountbatten thought for a while and due to his personal respect and admiration for Nehru and Patel and his love for India, agreed to take on the responsibility. 

During next fifteen minutes India’s first emergency cabinet committee came into existence. All members of the committee were handpicked by Mountbatten himself including his wife, Edwina Mountbatten who took care red cross and other voluntary organizations. As fate would have it, after years of struggle and barely after three weeks of Independence, India was once again being run by an Englishman.