Brushing aside the dust of untruth

AS the fiftieth anniversary of Indian independence on August 15, 1947, approaches, we may expect a spate of books on the subject, but none will be better than this. Patrick French has painstakingly trawled through primary sources and unearthed new material, reluctantly released by the authorities from the files of the Indian Political Intelligence service, that sheds new light on Gandhi's famous campaign for swaraj (self government), Jinnah's separatist movement that ended in the creation of Pakistan, and the entire complex skein of events from 1937-47.

His labours produce one genuine scoop: the pro-Japanese Subhas Chandra Bose, head of the ''Indian National Army'' during the Second World War, really did die in a plane crash in 1945, and did not survive, as some of his fanatical admirers claim. French has a rich cast of characters: on the Indian side, Gandhi, Nehru, Bose, Jinnah, Vallabhbhai, Patel, Krishna Menon, Liaquat, Ali Khan, Kalam, Azad, V P Menon; and on the British, the imperialists F E Smith, Churchill, Leo Amery, and the viceroys Irwin, Linlithgow, Wavell, and Mountbatten.

It is difficult to praise too highly the way French provides short biographical portraits that unerringly point to strengths and weaknesses. The Congress President, Kalam Azad, is revealed as a nonentity and Nehru as weak and vacillating, while Jinnah, though not rehabilitated, is rescued from the anathema which most Western historians have cast upon him.

French reveals Jinnah came to the idea of partition late due to the intransigence of the Indian National Congress, that it is false to say the creation of a Muslim state was always his abiding aim. The man who emerges with most credit on the Indian side is the Reforms Commissioner, V P Menon.

Most feathers will be ruffled by the portrait of Gandhi. As against the usual hagiography, and in particular the absurd version presented in Richard Attenborough's movie, French portrays the Mahatma as a wily, slippery, two-faced politician, who passed his sell-by date soon after the famous salt march to Dandi in 1930. ''From the late 1930s onwards, Gandhi was a liability to the freedom movement, pursuing an eccentric agenda that created as many problems as it solved.'' Gandhi's frequent (sometimes overnight) changes of mind on policy issues show it was not just communist parties in this era who could steam in circles and sever their own ideological tow-rope. French also shows many of Gandhi's followers are humbugs. Gandhi was insistent his disciples clean latrines daily as part of a campaign of humility; this was rewritten so that toilet cleaning took place once a year, on Gandhi's birthday.

French is revisionist too on the British side of things. He refutes decisively the old canard that the British systematically followed a divide-and-rule policy in their struggle with the Indian Congress.

The truth is that there was usually no policy at all, just a process of muddling through from day to day, from one short-term crisis to the next. The archives show the British had no secret policy all along to partition India; indeed the 1946 delegation from the Attlee Cabinet tried to give India away only to fall foul of the intransigence of Indian leaders.

It is also a mistaken notion premature British departure from the sub-continent was a primary cause of the horrific massacres that followed Indian independence and the creation of Pakistan. In French's account the chief culprit was Congress, for creating a climate in which atrocities could take place. The Radcliffe Commission, which sliced off the two territories that made up Pakistan, can also scarcely be blamed for the problems of partition when it was given just six weeks in which to decide the fate of 300 million people.

French thinks there are two minor counts on which the British can be indicted in 1947. In the first place, the Indian Political Intelligence Service, which in the past identified communalist troublemakers ahead of time, had virtually ceased to exist. And second, the ''quit India'' date of August 1947 coincided with an appalling financial crisis in London, when Britain seemed on the edge of an abyss and Attlee was thinking of introducing a ration of 1700 calories per person per day.

The personality on the British side who, surprisingly, emerges with most credit is Wavell, who, the author says, understood India better than any westerner except Sir Francis Younghusband, the subject of his previous book. Certainly, Wavell gains much stature from the annals of his viceroyalty carefully explicated here. But French really shows his calibre in an extraordinarily able and nuanced discussion of the last viceroy, Mountbatten. ''Dickie'' has people spitting blood whenever his name is mentioned, and French concedes his arrogance, Prometheus complex, and maddening tendency forever to shift blame for his mistakes.

But further he will not go. Andrew Roberts in Eminent Church-illians laid responsibility for the communal massacres of 1947, in which at least a million died, at Mountbatten's door, but French will have none of it. He proves conclusively Mountbatten was not the author of the evils of partition; all the important decisions had been taken by HMG before Dickie departed on his five-month viceroyalty.

Moreover, the mutual killing of Muslims and Hindus was not communal violence but masked other conflicts: debtors against creditors, the landed against landless, bosses against workers, and criminals, organised and unorganised, against society in general. By the time French has finished his learned exposition, Roberts's anti-Mountbatten diatribe lies in tatters;

This is a brilliant book on an important subject. It may be hard for rival practitioners, who have laboured for years, to have to yield the palm to an author who, at 31, already has two major books under his belt. But there can surely now be no serious doubt French is the most impressive Western historian of modern India currently at work. If this book does not win prizes, I'll eat my khadi cap.