And then they had gained the deadly power of foresight. In seven years from the Transition, nearly six years now, almost all of them would vanish into the ash heap of history. Yadavindrah Singh had been one of the Princes who had repressed both the Communist and the Nationalist movements; to know that the British would have, or had, abandoned them was… frustrating, to say the least.
The china cup, worth nearly a thousand pounds in 1940, shattered in his hand. The wave of pure anger that had gripped him was the same as the wave that had gripped the other Princes, from the largest to the smallest. Their first response had been defiance, defiance, only to discover that the future British hardly understood the issues at hand. They were used to dealing with a united India – almost all of them were apologetic about the Empire – and the Princes were regarded as a bothersome nuisance.
Yadavindrah Singh smiled darkly. His state might not be the largest – that honour was reserved for Rajputana – but he had a powerful army. Still, after reading the reports of battles in the Middle East and the Far East, he was no longer certain that he could defend his rights. The Princes were united as never before; they could fragment the country – and the future British seemed not to care. If the Provisional Government refused to honour their claims to power – and make a reasonable accommodation – India would dissolve into civil war.
He glanced down at the report. His recruiters had not only managed to expand his personal army, but to recruit a number of European – mainly British – officers from the Indian Army, which was supposed to be under the command of the Provisional Government. In reality, it was under the command of Sir Archibald Wavell, a Contemporary Briton, who was the only man everyone trusted. Wavell was a known factor and he had the respect of his men, particularly the reequipped Indian Divisions.
He shook his head. Wavell could be relied upon; the future British could not be, for the history books made that very certain. Carefully avoiding the crushed cup – a servant would clear the mess up later and replace the expensive carpet – Yadavindrah Singh began to lay his plans. The Princes would have a role in governing India – or they would tear it apart.
“All those lovely ladies, you must lay them all aside,
“I am the little gypsy girl that is to be your bride.”
When he had been younger, and first served as an Ambassador, Ambassador Homchoudhury had heard those lines in Britain, retelling a story of a gypsy fortune-teller who’d manipulated the local squire’s son into marrying her. Being imaginative, he’d created a whole mythology around the story; the girl had indeed foreseen her marriage, but she hadn’t seen that her husband was abusive. It had foreshadowed events ever since the Transition that he’d allowed himself to wonder, in his few private moments, if he had genuinely foreseen something.
Of course, he thought wryly, if I had foreseen the Transition, I would have made certain not to have accompanied Britain.
He scowled. He’d been taught in Calcutta, and the teachers had glossed over the period when India had been a restless state in the British Empire. There was something… unsporting about the British simply giving up and abandoning the nation, no glorious wars of independence, just the tired British lion slinking away. The single map had marked India as a simple pink spot on the map… and missed altogether the sheer mind-boggling complexity of British India. He’d known very little about the Princes, and still less about the seven-way arguments between the various Indian factions… and now he was expected to act as a neutral arbiter between the three major factions.
“We must proceed at once to full elections and democratic majority rule,” Jawaharlal Nehru said. His statement would have been more impressive if he hadn’t made it every second day for four months. “If we are to be a modern country, then we must be completely democratic.”
Mohammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, coughed. His body was damaged; the medical treatment he was undergoing to avoid the tuberculoses that would have killed him seven years later was ongoing. Homchoudhury sighed; in many ways the Indian National Congress could threaten to create Pakistan, which Jinnah wanted to avoid at all costs.
Homchoudhury felt a flicker of sympathy. It could hardly be easy steering a course between radicals on both sides of the divide. Jinnah’s life was a target for radicals of all strips; someone had already killed the Maharaja of Kashmir when news of his deal with Nehru, in the future, had reached the largely Muslim population of the state. Two regiments of the Contemporary British forces, units that could hardly be spared from the Burma Line near Imphal, were now tied down keeping the peace; Muslim unrest was a powerful force.
“We need, require, guarantees that the rights of the Muslim citizens will be honoured,” Jinnah replied, in his slow precise voice. Homchoudhury was unwillingly impressed; Jinnah had been a lawyer before returning to the independence movement and he knew how to make his points. “We have not suffered to create Hindustan.”
“Nor have we suffered to become a minority in both states,” Baldev Singh proclaimed in his booming voice. The Sikh would have become the first Minister of Defence in India, but there would not be a Sikh state, at least not in the original history.
Homchoudhury took a breath. The Princes had finally organised themselves – in between arguing over their course of action, panicking over the Kashmiri Crisis, and threatening civil war – and their delegation had finally arrived in New Delhi. Time had run out for the Provisional Government, and he thanked God for Governor-General Wavell. The unimaginative British officer might just have prevented an immediate bloodbath, but he wasn’t the type of man to save India now.
“Perhaps there is an intermediate solution,” he said, and noticed how all of the delegates looked desperately at him. All of them wanted an agreement, they just couldn’t decide on the terms. “I have been watching very carefully the attempts to draw up a single constitution for the Commonwealth, one that will reflect the new realities.”
There were some gasps, from people who had hoped to work on the constitution themselves, but mainly the room was quiet. “Partition didn’t work in my era and won’t work here, particularly given the knowledge of the future.” He noticed how the Muslim delegation glared at one another; the western Muslims and the eastern Muslims, Pakistan and Bangladesh. “We need a compromise that all sides can live with.”
He paused for a moment. “We have a Bill of Rights for the Commonwealth now, one that concedes the legal equality of all, provided they agree to live under the constitution and respect its provisions for others. My proposal is that we use the Bill of Rights as a template; we must become blind to the religion or colour or even sex of a person.”
“That would be an excellent step,” Gandhi said. The little man was bouncing up and down delightedly. Unlike many, Gandhi had been galvanised to learn of his future mistakes. “I would have no problem with accepting that as a basis of a unified India.”