Chapter 143: Terms?

South Block

21 September 1950

The rain had gone. The sun came through the long windows of the Cabinet Room and lay in a pale oblong on the floor. At the table sat Ram, Patel, and Nehru, with Mullick and Kao on one side, and Cariappa, Katari and Mukherjee on the other. Krishna Menon, newly back from the Foreign Ministry, sat at the end with a thin folder.

"I will begin with what I have," Mullick said. "It is not from my officers."

He laid a single sheet on the table.

"This came three days ago through the American Embassy. Ambassador Henderson sent it by hand, with a covering note saying he had been asked to pass it on, without comment, by someone in the State Department who thought we should see it. It is a summary of a conversation at the Foreign Office in London, a week ago. The British Permanent Representative at the United Nations has been instructed to bring a resolution before the Security Council when the Pakistani complaint is lodged. The Pakistanis have not yet lodged it. They are being advised, quietly, to do so."

"What does it say?" Nehru asked.

"A cease-fire, with both armies to withdraw to the lines of the fourteenth of May. An international commission to supervise. And the establishment of a plebiscite, under United Nations auspices, in every district of the former Dominion of Pakistan that India has occupied."

"The fourteenth of May," Cariappa said. "That is before Karachi, before Lahore, before Makran."

"Before everything," Mullick said.

Patel did not move. "How reliable is it?"

"Henderson says that the person who sent it has never been wrong. He did not name him. I believe him." Mullick’s voice was flat. "I would add that it is consistent with everything else we have seen. The English are old friends of the Pakistani Army. Gracey’s officers have been writing to their old regimental colleagues since the winter. The Council is the only place where a lost war can be undone by a vote."

"And the votes?"

Menon opened his folder. "Seven certain, Prime Minister. Britain, France, Norway, Cuba, Ecuador, probably Egypt, probably the Nationalist delegate if Washington tells him. Yugoslavia undecided. Without a negative vote from a permanent member, it carries."

"Without the Russians in the chamber, nobody can stop it," Patel said.

"Nobody can stop the vote, Sardar-sahib. We can stop it binding us. Setalvad is clear on that. A Chapter Six resolution is a recommendation, and a party to the dispute is not obliged to obey it." Menon’s thin mouth moved. "But we should be seen to have defied the Council, and every newspaper in England would say so."

Ram had listened without moving. He turned his head.

"Krishna. How long do we have?"

"Until Pakistan lodges the complaint. A fortnight, perhaps three weeks."

"Then we do not wait for them." Ram laid his hand flat on the table. "We ask for a cease-fire ourselves. Before they ask. In the Council, under our name, on the terms we drafted in July."

Nobody spoke.

"The terms are these," Ram said. "A cease-fire along the line we hold at the moment it is signed. The release of every abducted woman, living, with a Red Cross inspection from Peshawar to Attock. The closure of the training camps. The dissolution of the lashkars. The return of every Indian prisoner. The surrender of the men who ran the Ajnala and Kot Mehrban raids, to be tried by a tribunal akin to Nuremberg. And recognition of the accessions of Kalat, Sindh, and Gilgit. We have put them in writing. We offer them to the Council and to the world."

"They will refuse," Nehru said.

"It is their choice. A resolution that asks India to give back what she took will meet a proposal that asks Pakistan to stop what she did. The Council will have to choose which to take up. Every delegate will have read the evidence. Every delegate will know that Pakistan has lost the war. When the British stand to defend her, they will do it against a cease-fire that India has already offered."

"A trap," Menon murmured, for the second time that summer.

"A proposal. It becomes a trap only if they refuse it."

Patel almost smiled. "And if they accept?"

"Then the war ends on our terms, and I shall not complain. We consolidate our supply networks in the new territories, administer them through our laws and prepare our attention to two new matters."

"Goa?" Katari said.

"Goa." Ram sat back. "I want the service chiefs to begin planning now. Not for the day after the cease-fire. For the day eighteen months after. I want an operation that takes the Portuguese enclaves without a shot, if possible, in less than two years. The Navy to isolate Goa, Daman and Diu. The Air Force to neutralise their fighter strength, which is none. The Army to hold a brigade ready on the Konkan border. I am not asking for a plan to invade. I am asking for a plan that makes invasion unnecessary."

"The Portuguese have a garrison of three thousand, Prime Minister," Katari said. "They have no navy to speak of. The danger is not the soldiers; it is the Church."

"I know; that is for Mullick." Ram turned. "Bhola Nath, I want your people inside Goa. Not as spies. As friends. Trade unions, bus drivers, fishermen, teachers. Everyone who has had enough of Salazar. I want a list of every Goan officer in the Portuguese administration who would rather work for us. I want the local press. And I want a close eye on the churches, in Goa and the south and the east. Not because they are Christian, because some of their networks carried British officers in 1947, and I do not want to find out in a hurry that they are carrying Portuguese ones now."

"I understand, Prime Minister."

"Do not touch them. Watch them. If a priest is a priest, he is a priest."

"And Kao?" Patel asked.

"Kao has a harder task." Ram turned to the man by the window. "Mr. Kao. You have heard that I want Goa, but not just Goa; I want more. In 1947, we sent the Foreign Minister to Lisbon to negotiate a transfer of power in the territory, and they rudely rebuffed us. It is time to pay them back some. The Portuguese hold Mozambique and Angola. The French hold Madagascar. Both have local movements that have been told for fifty years to wait.

"In Madagascar, the rising of ’47 was crushed, and the leaders are in prison. In Mozambique, there is almost nothing, a handful of teachers and clerks in Louren?o Marques who read the newspapers. I want your service to put a hand under both. Money, if they need it. Printing presses. A safe passage to India for the leaders, when they want one. Decommissioned arms from the military when there is a significant resistance movement, and no promises of invasion."

Kao, who had not spoken, said quietly, "To what end, Prime Minister?"

"We gained independence through tireless efforts spanning about two hundred years. Since our independence, we have asked for, and been denied, a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, the same United Nations that is founded on the principle of ending colonialism. I believe India can do more to end the colonial empires than endless debates and speeches in Lake Success."

"It will be seen as meddling."

"It will be seen as solidarity. A man who has been taught that the world will not help him will help himself, if he sees someone helping others. Do it quietly, Mr. Kao."

Mullick said, with the stiff dignity of a man who had been told and did not intend to be offended, "I shall assume I was not in the room."

"I should be obliged." Ram smiled. "Gentlemen, Krishna goes to New York at once. Setalvad’s brief and Mr. Kao’s evidence go with him. The proposal is lodged before the Pakistanis ask. The chiefs begin planning for Goa. Mullick for Goa and the churches, Kao for Madagascar and Mozambique. Is there anything else?"

Patel, who had been silent through most of it, tapped the floor with the tip of his cane.

"One thing. You said eighteen months after the cease-fire." He looked at Ram with his heavy-lidded eyes. "I will be there."

"I intend you to be, Vallabhbhai."

"Good. I wish to see a Portuguese flag come down. I have wished it since 1947." The corners of his mouth moved. "It will be very good for the blood."

The Ministry of Culture

25 September 1950

Dr. Radhakrishnan’s room in the Ministry of Culture was not large. It had a plain desk, a bookshelf covering one wall, and a window that looked over a small courtyard with a single neem tree. Papers lay in neat stacks on every flat surface. A tray of tea sat untouched.

Ram came with Nehru at eleven. Guru Dutt Sodhi rose from a chair by the door with a thick folder under his arm.

"Prime Minister. Panditji. I am sorry to receive you in such a state."

"It looks very much like my own," Ram said. "Please, sit."

They sat. For a moment, no one spoke. Sodhi opened his folder and closed it again. Ram, who had expected a request, was surprised to find that what he felt, looking at the two men, was a plain, uncomplicated pleasure.

"Before anything else," he said, "I wish to congratulate you both. The National Games, in November last. Twelve thousand athletes, forty-one sports, a stadium that held sixty thousand, and not a single riot. The Asian Games, in March. Eleven countries, fifteen hundred competitors, and the first time in history that Japanese and Chinese teams have marched into a stadium together since the war. I watched it on the newsreel at Birla House, and I did not move for an hour. The Home Minister says you did what the Army could not."

Sodhi looked at his hands. "It was the athletes, Prime Minister."

"It was you. You built a stadium in a year, in a city that had no money, and put a Shan boxer in the ring with a Malayali boxer, as you said you would. I have seen the photograph. They are embracing."

"They were very surprised, I think."

"I think everyone was." Ram turned to Radhakrishnan. "Doctor, you carry the credit as well. You were the one who found the money."

"I found it in the Finance Minister’s pocket," Radhakrishnan said, with a faint twinkle. "Shroff-ji has not yet forgiven me."

"He never forgives anyone. It is how I know he is honest." Ram leaned back. "Professor Sodhi, I want to talk about the next one."

"The second National Games, Prime Minister. In 1951."

"Where?"

Sodhi opened the folder. "I had thought Delhi again. The stadium is there, and the athletes’ village. It would be cheaper."

"I thought Rangoon."

Sodhi stopped.

"Burma is the newest part of the Republic," Ram said. "The people of Rangoon and Mandalay and the hill states have seen us arrive as soldiers, doctors, clerks. They have not yet seen us arrive as a festival. A National Games in Rangoon, in a stadium we build for the purpose, with the whole country coming to them, would do more than a hundred speeches. And in 1953, Colombo. In 1955, Port Louis. A different part of the Republic each time, until every province has hosted and every province has been host to the rest."

For a moment, no one spoke. Then Sodhi began to smile, slowly, like a man who has been handed a key to a room he had not known was there.

"It will cost a great deal."

"Everything worth doing does. I shall find the money."

"Prime Minister." Sodhi’s voice shook a little. "I should like to ask for something more. The first Games had forty-one sports. I should like the second to have sixty. More weight classes in wrestling and boxing, so that a smaller man is not made to fight a larger one. More track events. A proper swimming programme. And I should like," he hesitated, "I should like women’s events. Not as a sideshow. As full competitions, with their own medals."

Radhakrishnan raised an eyebrow. "It will not be uncontroversial, Professor."

"It is not, Doctor, I know. But I have seen the women of the Seva Vahini drill on a parade ground. I have seen girls from Kerala outrun boys. It is time."

"Do it," Ram said.

"The orthodox will have complaints."

"The orthodox complained about everything else, and the republic is still standing." Ram looked at Nehru. "Jawaharlal, you are very quiet."

"I am thinking," Nehru said, "that I have been asked to say something for fifteen years about what the Republic is for. I think the Professor has just said it better than I could."

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