by A. G. NOORANI
Prime Minister Clement Attlee was little better. He amazingly escaped censure for (a) appointing a superannuated Pethick Lawrence as Secretary of State for India; (b) supporting Stafford Cripps when he sabotaged the Cabinet Mission’s Plan in July 1946 to please Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress and thus paved the way to Partition; and (c) supporting Lord Mountbatten as he rushed through with Partition, causing enormous loss of life and property. No Conservative would have disagreed with Attlee’s stand on the princely states.
What emerges also is the profound ignorance of the Indian situation in British and American leaders. In a famous exchange, John Foster Dulles called the Gurkhas “Pakistanis”. Walter Lippmann “corrected” him – No. They were Indians.
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