IN the run-up to the Indian subcontinent’s 75^th anniversary of independence from British rule this week, Channel 4 screened the two-part documentary, India 1947 Partition in Colour, which tells us about the characters involved in the decision to partition.

I’ve been riveted for the past two Sunday nights. It beats Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi, which portrays “jolly good fellows just getting it wrong” — a current that informs most British commentary on partition, where it is discussed at all. 

The first part of Partition in Colour goes into great detail about the personal relationships between the lead characters behind partition and how these may have influenced partition itself, even to suggest that “Mountbatten and Nehru were attracted to each other on a romantic level” — but that is best not to dwell on too much.

Among the important things we learn is that after Mountbatten arrives six months before partition, his “Plan Balkan” is approved in London, despite not being discussed with Indian leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. 

The idea was to create a dozen or more provincial governments, however it was dropped after opposition from the likes of Jinnah, and the subsequent Mountbatten Plan was not, in fact, Mountbatten’s at all — it was his constitutional adviser VP Menon who hastily came up with the idea to transfer power to two countries.

While the programme may have overemphasised the personal relationships between the leading characters, it does at least begin to hold the Mountbatten legacy in India to full account. 

First, out of the blue, Mountbatten declared that independence had to happen by August 15 1947, even though the British government had given him till June 1948 to leave British India as its last viceroy.

This clearly made a tight programme even tighter and led to bad decisions becoming even more profound as it gave little space to challenge bizarre decisions, like that of creating a new state of Pakistan with two parts 1,000 miles from each other, and a potential future adversary in between.

Mountbatten had to stay around after August 15 anyway, to address the independence of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in June 1948.

It’s not clear at all what advantages there were in bringing this deadline forward at all, apart from personal convenience and vanity on the part of Mountbatten.

Deciding not to announce the boundaries of partition till after independence appears to have been solely the decision of Mountbatten — and what a crazy one it was, as we see him locking away the maps of the new borders.

This undoubtedly added to the insecurity of many who wanted to be on the right side of the new borders and was clearly a contributing factor to the communal violence in which millions were killed in one of the biggest mass transfers of people — of up to 15 million — humankind has seen.

Once announced, it caused mayhem and chaos and led to one of the worst humanitarian crises in human history.

On top of this, some parts of Bengal (split down the middle into West Bengal and East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) put up the wrong flags on the day of independence, only to find out about the mistake a few days later.

In Malda and Murshidabad they hoisted the Pakistani flag before becoming a part of India; and similarly Khulna and Chittagong hoisted the Indian tricolour only two days before becoming part of Pakistan; while Karimganj in Sylhet, which had been elected by plebiscite to be part of East Bengal (a province of the new Pakistan), astonishingly found itself in India.

Thankfully, my family stayed put not far from the new India and Pakistan border defined by the Radcliffe Line. 

It is also clear that Mountbatten had also given Nehru privileged access to the lines of partition proposed by British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe, who knew little about India. It is a line that has not stopped bleeding since 1947. Nehru thus was able to argue for certain bits to be included in India, like Kolkata in Bengal.

Jinnah was clearly disadvantaged and suspected this to be the case and it of course complicated his relationship with Mountbatten even further.

Furthermore there was a complete reluctance on the part of Mountbatten to use British troops in communal riots in the lead-up to partition in both Punjab and Bengal. It could well have saved many lives, by at least acting as a deterrent to the religious gangs roaming the streets. However, the reorganisation of the future armies of India and Pakistan was clearly their priority, even with the mayhem around them. 

Clearly no-one in the Indian Office at Whitehall, either at ministerial or Civil Service level, kept an eye on the complete maladministration of Mountbatten and his antics in Delhi.

This was at the cost of many lives and souring the relationship between the two states that were created at independence, right from the outset. 

Where Partition in Colour comes short is its lack of coverage of the circumstances in Bengal and complete focus on the Punjab. l try to make amends with the above.

In doing so the programme does not acknowledge the revolutionaries and martyrs in the independence movement, many of whom were Bengali. 

Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote the Indian national anthem, and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, who famously said: “Freedom is not given, it is taken,” were critical of how partition came about in the first place, and were offering an alternative.

Furthermore many Bengalis were also involved in the All India Muslim League, as illustrated by its founding meeting occurring in Dhaka.

As Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a senior leader of the Indian National Congress, once said: “What Bengal thinks today India thinks tomorrow.” 

Murad Qureshi is a British politician member of Labour and Co-operative parties and a former member of the London Assembly.