Freedom at Midnight (46 page)

NO SERVANT PROBLEM FOR VICEROYS

The last Viceroy and Vicereine pose {above) before the grand staircase of Viceroy's House with some of the thousands of chamberlains, cooks, stewards, bearers, messengers, valets, horsemen, guards and gardeners who constituted the viceregal establishment. Among their number was a man whose sole function was plucking chickens, and fifty boys employed to scare away the birds in the House's sumptuous Mogul Gardens. At the Viceregal Lodge in Simla {below), where Mountbatten, his wife and 17-year-old daughter Pamela take tea, still other retainers waited to attend the Viceroy.

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FOUR MEN-

AND THE DESTINIES OF A FIFTH OF MANKIND

During four crucial weeks in April-May 1947, the fate of the Indian subcontinent and its four hundred million inhabitants rested on a series of private conversations between India's Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, and the three men pictured on these pages: Mohammed Ali Jinnah {opposite, below), the founder of Pakistan; Jawaharlal Nehru {opposite, top); and the leader of India's independence struggle, Mahatma Gandhi {above).

"A Ghastly Yellow Porridge"

To consecrate his first meeting with Gandhi {above), Mountbatten invited the Indian leader to tea on the lawn of Viceroy's House. Gandhi, strict in his diet, brought his own, goat's curds, which he proceeded to eat from the tin bowl he'd used in British prison. He thrust a spoonful of his "ghastly yellow porridge" at the fastidious Viceroy, who swallowed it with a grimace. Later {left) the architect of the downfall of the British empire returned to the study of Queen Victoria's great-grandson with his hand resting on Edwina Mountbatten's shoulder.

The Rationalist Leader of a Land of Mystics

A deep and lasting friendship which began at their first meeting linked Jawaharlal Nehru to Louis and Edwina Mountbatten. Their close relations were a vital factor in Mountbatten's success and enabled him to convince the Indian leadership that the division of their country was the essential, ultimate price of their freedom.

"A Rose Between Two Thorns"

Convinced that Lady Mountbatten would be posed in the center of the ritual picture below, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the usually reserved leader of India's Moslems, had prepared a little joke to mark the occasion. Placed in the middle himself, the unfortunate Jinnah could not control his tongue and let the joke—"a rose between two thorns"—escape anyway.

THE MAHARAJAS: LAST OF A FABLED BREED

Providence, Kipling wrote, created the maharajas to offer mankind a spec tacle. Theirs was a world of marble palaces and scented harems, tigers and elephants, fabulous jewels and hoards of gold. In 1947, India's 565 maharajas, nawabs, princes and rajas still ruled over a third of India's land! surface and a population equal to that of the United States. Some, like the| Maharaja of Bikaner—with Lord Mountbatten {above) and reviewing hisj camel corps from his Rolls-Royce {below)— ran model states. Others squandered their states' revenues in pursuit of their personal pleasures.

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A TASTE FOR SPORT AND THE MEANS TO INDULGE IT

Sport and sex were the maharajas' preferred pastimes. Even legs crippled at birth couldn't keep the Maharaja of Udaipur [below) from hunting tiger. His colleague, a turn of the century Maharaja of Bikaner {above), savors a different form of princely sport—receiving his weight in gold as a birthday present.