The Transfer of Power, 1947

Abstract

Those who kindly invited me to give this lecture showed some resistance to its sub-title. I insisted on ‘a view from the sidelines’ because I wished to emphasize that my remarks would be based on my own presence at the events of 1947 and confined to those matters with which I had direct acquaintance. This is still largely true: mine is in part an undisguisedly personal tale. But the matter is rather more complicated. For one thing, while I was certainly a spectator I was also able for a couple of months in 1947 to scamper on to a segment of New Delhi's field of fateful play, even to get a touch or two of the ball, before returning to my place on the terraces. But for the purpose of this lecture I could not content myself with recollections; I have, as it were, examined the slow re-plays of the television cameras. In trying to match my memories, diaries and letters from 1947 with the files at India Office Records, there have, I confess, been phases of bewilderment on the way to such modest and provisional enlightenment as I can offer. It is not simply that in the 34 years the world has moved on, the perspective has changed; that is a problem which the historian's whole skill is devoted to overcome. The difficulty is aggravated when the spectator cum minor actor in the drama of yesteryear puts on the historian's robe; for not only the world but he with it has changed.