bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1997) — Fall 1997 // Automne 1997, pp. 10–11
Hyen in sustain a a dead lifty years ago I was on temporary years in Australia, when a telegram came from Ottawa ordering me to go to Delhi to “pave the way for a new mission”. Those were the days when one could travel at leisure by ship on government time and expense. My wife and I took a freighter from Durban to Bombay, with calls at many ports including aromatic Zanzibar, the remote Seychelles and decaying Goa.
We arrived in Bombay at the beginning of April 1947 to face the realities of India. The Canadian trade commissioner’s office, which had been there for some years, was helpful. They readily persuaded me to order some standard filing cabinets from a factory, to be delivered in, say, four months.
The government had agreed to ship my precious Ford car with us. It was one of the very first post-war cars out of the Port Elizabeth plant (Ford of South Africa being a subsidiary to Ford of Canada). In Bombay, Ford of India (also a subsidiary) arranged to ship it under guard to Delhi. There it was not only personally useful, but also for a time was the only vehicle for the mission after the team arrived from Ottawa, when it was given a lot of mileage.
The political situation in India was intensely significant, I arrived with Lord Mountbatten, to be the last Viceroy, appointed by the Atlee Government which clearly wished to speed up the process for full independence. The two outstanding issues were to determine whether there would be one country or two, and to fix a date for independence. The first time I heard the cry “Pakistan Zinzabad”, in the middle of the night, I thought the crowd was saying “Pakistan is in the Bag”.
While history was being made I was buried in administrative tasks and coping with the local bureaucracy. My wife did provide a good clipping service, and I even managed to write a couple of letters to Ottawa, pecked out on a hired typewriter that was wartime junk. Perhaps inevitably one of these began with a Durham paraphrase about finding two nations warring in the bosom of a single state.
The wartime shortages had persisted in Delhi and the essentials for an office were not available. We worked out of rooms in the hotel, the old Imperial, where we also lived. Local female office staff was difficult to find. Good typewriters, could not be obtained, whether to buy or hire.
The heat in May and June, before the rains came, was unbelievable and almost unbearable. We did have high ceilings and electric fans (still called punkahs from the manually-operated fans of earlier colonial times). We learned to live and work in the downdraft of the fans. Modern air conditioning units were becoming available, but very slowly.
The nights could be very uncomfortable, especially if the fan failed. Delhi became the City of Dreadful Nights, though not actually the one so vividly described by Kipling. Apart from the heat, I was sometimes restless listening for the morning newspaper at the door. What would be the reaction to the latest move? What would the Brits say, or Jinnah or Gandhi or Nehru? One country or two? Peace or war?
Shortly after arriving, I saw the handsome property at 4 Aurangzeb Road, which was under wartime requisition and had been converted to officer accommodation, with the main rooms divided into cubicles and the garden filled with “hutments” It would make a good residence in a good area, with space for offices in two wings nearer the street. I sent a brief description to Ottawa but could not provide the two Treasury essentials: the rent and the term of a lease. Amazingly, I was given the go-ahead by the Department.
I became concerned that newly arrived Ambassadors from countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium, who had looked at the house, might pull rank on me and get it. I was a lowly Second Secretary with no proper accreditation or status. So I decided to approach Nehru, who was Commonwealth Secretary in the then Indian Government. He received me with his well-known grace and charm. We did not discuss the state of negotiations with the British and the Moslem League. I got an assurance that the property was earmarked for Canada.
We did not get possession for some months, while I preoccupied myself with the problems of telephones and electricity for air conditioners (still problems of the greater Delhi of today, I understand). Several years later the rent was fixed and paid; more years again the property was bought from a large Hindu family. Also, the office moved out to the Canadian compound in the new diplomatic ghetto.
The team arrived from Ottawa at the end of June: the High Commissioner John Kearney, Counsellor Morley Scott, a male clerk and three stenographers. They brought much-needed office supplies, new typewriters, but no cars. At first they were a burden but later became a very good team. They were not, at the beginning, impressed with the little I had accomplished as a solo advance party, but they soon learned how difficult it is to try to hustle the East, especially India in the immediate post-war period and at a time of political upheaval.
Soon enough the great occasion of Freedom at Midnight arrived on August 15. India got its full independence after a long period of substantial self-government; and the Moslem State of Pakistan was created, in two widely separated parts. The celebrations were accompanied by political and social turmoil, and especially afterwards by bloody communal strife in Delhi itself.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1997) — Fall 1997 // Automne 1997, pp. 10–11. Read the rest of this issue →
