February 5, 2002

Although a work of high merit on the complex issue of transfer of power from the British Raj to Pakistan in the North West Frontier Province, this book attempts to give a reassessment of the men and events that played a decisive role in reshaping the future of the province.

However, the one character in this high drama that plays the role of the villain of the piece and dominates much of the book is Sir Olaf Caroe. He was governor of the province in the most crucial period of March 1946-June 1947 and had tried to play the Congress off the Muslim League — a sin that cost him too dearly.

The author does not say so but tries to portray Sir Olaf as a victim of misunderstandings and injustice. Having taken care of the Muslim League’s close concerns in difficult times, the author attempts to give an impression that Caroe was not duly rewarded for his services. He poses the question: Why Jinnah chose Sir George Cunningham and rejected Caroe as the first post-Partition governor of the province?

More than half a century has passed since, and all the chief actors — Khan Sahib, Nehru, Badshah Khan, Mountbatten, Jinnah, Wavell and Caroe himself — are now dead. The author thinks, “now the play can be staged with honour and without embarrassment”. As the drama unfolds, Caroe emerges as the principal actor for his role in the chain of developments that led to the transfer of power in the NWFP. Sir George Cunningham, whom he succeeded and was later succeeded by, had only a peripheral role to play. A member of the ICS with long and wide-ranging experience as the Frontier administrator, Caroe was strikingly different from his predecessor who was cool and at home both with men and things.

Caroe was sharp, intelligent and difficult with all those he had to deal with. So he soon found himself on a collision course with his premier (as chief minister was called in those days) Dr Khan Sahib who had, in contrast, developed an excellent personal rapport with Sir George. During the 1945-46 general elections, Khan Sahib’s popular mandate was renewed despite a tough fight mounted by his political rivals.

Nehru’s visit to the tribal areas in October 1946, in his capacity as vice-president of the Governor-General’s executive council and the member for external affairs, proved a disastrous start for Caroe as governor. Nehru had to confront hostile demonstrations and even an almost fatal assault on his person.

These, Nehru suspected, were masterminded by the political agents at Caroe’s behest who, he thought, was acting under extraneous pressures.

What Caroe had done was to permit the Pir of Manki, a Muslim League leader known for fiery speeches to tour the same areas ahead of Nehru’s visit, thus vitiating the atmosphere for the latter. Added to it was his accusation against Dr Khan Sahib and other ministers of interfering in judicial processes and pursuing wrong administrative policies. “A bad beginning that became worse with every passing day,” Wavell wrote in his journal.

Caroe insisted that Khan Sahib’s 1946 electoral victory had lost its relevance in the changed situation in early 1947 and that he had no mandate to keep the Pathans out of Pakistan. Nehru argued that having been democratically elected a year before, Khan Sahib’s position was unassailable. But the unrest in the province, Jinnah asserted, proved otherwise. So, the rift between the Congress government and Caroe widened. The governor’s advice to New Delhi was: dismiss the ministry and hold fresh elections.

What better proof, the author says, was required to establish that Caroe was “colluding” with the Muslim League. Khan Sahib told Wavell when the latter visited the province in April 1947 that the real leader of the Muslim League was not Jinnah but Caroe who, he said, had engineered demonstrations that Mountbatten had to confront.

Mountbatten’s biographer, Philip Ziegler, confirms Caroe’s inclination towards the Muslim League but thinks “anyone in Caroe’s position may not have behaved differently”. Weightman, Nehru’s British foreign secretary in the external affairs department, noted on November 6 that the Congress was determined to get rid of Caroe and noted: “badly beleaguered, it is not unlikely that Caroe may have leaned over to the other side”.

However, Caroe was eased out of office in June 1947 and for long he continued to nurse a grouse that there did exist a clear understanding (with the Muslim League) that he would go back to Peshawar if the Congress lost the referendum but it was not honoured. He felt he received “unworthy treatment”. Sir George Cunningham’s diaries reveal “how badly” Caroe had been treated. Whitehall refused to involve itself saying: .. should Pakistan advise the King that Caroe resume or be reappointed the situation would be different”.

Jinnah’s choice of Cunningham almost broke Caroe’s heart. He remained in a state of dismay even long after the dust had settled down on the traumatic events of 1947. Jinnah’s decision appeared to be an almost complete turnaround but it was not so. The fact remains that Congress misunderstood Caroe and his so-called pro-League bias was more a fiction. Why Jinnah and his associates did not trust him was not without reasons.

The editor of Jinnah papers has revealed what he describes as Caroe’s “subversive role”. According to him, Abdul Ghaffar Khan and the Congress ministry in the NWFP had “at the instance of Governor Sir Olaf Caroe... mounted a counter-attack on the League. Their weapon: a threat of provincial independence and their method a propaganda campaign for the Pathan state.”

It was Sir Olaf who had suggested to the Frontier Congress that an appeal to ethnicity to forge political union was a “far more constructive one than that of Islam in danger”. The author is of the view that Caroe suffered from a split personality. His head, he says, stood for the Frontier Congress; his heart for the Muslim League. But Khan Sahib never favoured embracing the Pathans of Afghanistan. It was in the wake of Nehru’s agreement to a vote for referendum that motivated the Khan brothers to seek some sort of Pathan independence.

In a letter to Caroe written on September 26, 1968, Iskander Mirza, Pakistan’s first president, said, “I told Liaquat Ali Khan of your great qualities and ... that you should go back as governor and that Muslim League was honour-bound to insist on this. But no other reasons but health (stories went round that Caroe had suffered a nervous breakdown) was given to sabotage you.”

The North-West Frontier drama 1945-47: a re-assessment
By Parshotam Mehra
Oxford University Press, 5 Bangalore Town, Sharae Faisal, Karachi-75350
Tel: 021-4529025
Email: ouppak@theoffice.net
ISBN 0-19-577802-2
262pp. Rs495

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