India 1947: Partition in Colour - First Season

This film contains upsetting images and descriptions of violence.

India was the jewel in the crown.

British people living in India would be living lives

of extraordinary opulence.

Britain is about to leave the greatest territory in its empire.

At the stroke of the midnight hour,

India will awake to life and freedom.

But with the clock ticking towards independence,

neighbours become mortal enemies in a fight for land and power.

Gosh, it's very sad stuff.

And she had this huge gaping wound in her forehead, you know.

A million people are killed in a year.

Partition is etched in blood and made in blood.

For the first time, colourised archive and private documents

will tell the story of the personal rivalries between the key players

at the centre of partition - Nehru, Jinnah and Mountbatten.

There were love affairs.

There were antagonisms.

There was distrust.

Jinnah very much sees Nehru as this kind of idealist upstart.

He didn't like him one bit.

I think they both, generally, thought this man was a psycho.

Mountbatten's wife was having an affair with Nehru,

the new Prime Minister of India.

What impact did their relationships have on one of

the 20th century's greatest catastrophes?

As you would imagine in any vast tragedy like this,

there's plenty of blame to go around.

There was a decision made, and it just shows the...

...the lack of value for Indian life.

It is not done and dusted.

It is something people debate over, fight over,

perhaps occasionally even kill over.

Out of London come new developments in Britain's plan

for a changing empire.

Under Prime Minister Attlee, the government of the United Kingdom

takes a new policy for freeing India.

The policies of Ernest Bevin and Attlee have been

sharply attacked by...

In spring 1946, following six years of war,

Britain is bankrupt.

After decades of Gandhi's protest movement,

Indian independence is finally within reach.

The Attlee government

wanted to be rid of India.

They needed to be rid of India. It was becoming a financial drain.

It's both British resources and resolve that have been lost

during World War II.

They're victorious, but they're exhausted.

The country's desperate to rebuild itself,

and it just isn't pragmatic to hold on to it any more.

So, the deal was, just get out of there

with as little collateral damage as possible,

and making it look as good as possible.

In March 1946, the British sent a committee to agree terms

with the leaders of India's biggest political parties.

The fate of 400 million Indians rests

on these men's shoulders.

Iron-willed Muslim Leaguer Muhammad Ali Jinnah debates India's future

with silver-tongued Pandit Nehru, voice of the Congress Party.

That Nehru-Jinnah story is at the heart of India's endgame of empire.

It's a captivating story.

It divides Indians. You know, "Who do you like more?"

These two men would be antagonists, who have huge egos,

that are also kind of gladiatorially fighting out for their ideas.

These names have become shorthand for different ideologies,

different viewpoints, different ideas of the future

of India and Pakistan.

Nehru famously, ironically, is associated as the last Englishman

to have ruled over India, because he was steeped in English education.

He was beloved. Whenever he went out campaigning, huge crowds of people

would come to see him.

My grandfather, VP Menon, greatly admired Nehru for his eloquence.

But he also regarded Nehru as being a volatile,

often irrational man,

who was given to acts of great impetuosity.

Nehru's goal from the very beginning had been a united and secular India

that included the entire subcontinent, one in which,

you know, it did not matter which religion you were.

At the same time, he really did not appreciate

the real fears of ordinary Muslims in India.

Jinnah feels that Nehru is only representing

the interests of the Hindus.

And Jinnah very much sees Nehru as this kind of political, naive,

idealist upstart,

with whom he has a very much toxic relationship at this point.

Unlike an orthodox conventional Muslim,

he ate pork and he was a connoisseur of good wine.

He drank scotch, he smoked incessantly.

From the 1940s onwards, Jinnah had become increasingly sectarian,

and the reason is very logical.

He looks at the European experience,

and he says that minorities will be exterminated.

That is what's happening in Europe.

If India was going to be united, with Hindus and Muslims

living together, Indian Muslims would be constantly at the mercy

of the Hindu majority.

To prevent that from happening, the best way to safeguard

Muslim interests was a separate country for Indian Muslims.

For weeks in New Delhi's sweltering heat,

the British have met with India's leaders for an important

diplomatic effort, as India's two great parties, Congress and Muslim,

search for an answer.

In June 1946, the UK government presents its draft plan

for independent India to Nehru and Jinnah.

India would remain united.

There would be a central government,

but the real power would lie with each individual province.

Jinnah agrees, because what the plan - according to Jinnah - does

is to give him the Muslim majority provinces

in the north-east Bengal,

and it gives him the province of the Punjab

and the North West Frontier Provinces.

Those places would have almost complete sovereignty

in deciding all of their affairs, and Jinnah thinks that

that is, essentially, Pakistan in a nutshell.

Nehru completely disagrees with the interpretation

that Jinnah has given, and says that he will not feel bound

by either the words or the spirit of the plan.

Nehru, essentially, said, "We're signing this now in order

"to get independence, and then once the British are gone,

"we will do as we please."

When Jinnah hears about Nehru, he's entirely outraged.

It reaffirmed all his fears about Congress, of course,

and it also made him look weak.

Jinnah withdraws his acceptance of the plan.

The British government's negotiations fall apart.

And it really then forces Jinnah's hand,

and he realises that there has to be a kind of demonstration

of mass public will for his idea.

He says, "Well, I do not wish to discuss ethics any longer.

"We have a pistol."

Now, this is a phenomenal statement.

There's a resolution passed at the Muslim League meeting

that says on August 16, in 1946, there will be direct action day,

and it's going to be a strike,

an all-day strike by Muslims all over India

that's going to show the power

of the demand for Pakistan.

He's resolving to unleash the power of the masses,

and see what message that sends to Congress

after this betrayal that he perceives.

He doesn't clearly define what direct action stands for,

and only very much later does he say that he thinks that direct action

does mean a peaceful protest.

But, of course, direct action starts to mean different things

for different people.

It has a kind of triggering effect.

It's a pressure tactic,

which becomes immediately incredibly violent.

Calcutta's a huge city.

It had been bombed during the war.

There were lots and lots of leftover weapons.

You know, I think people were just on edge.

Calcutta was always going to be one of the flash points

of the coming struggle, because it is a city which has,

although a majority Hindu population

it's in Bengal, which has a majority Muslim population.

So, there is, if you like, a genuine sort of nervousness,

a genuine fear of what might happen.

People were mainly gathering in peaceful demonstrations,

and they were largely adhering to what Jinnah had told them,

that this is going to be a peaceful hartal, a peaceful strike.

But then groups of Hindus and Muslims run into each other.

Muslim protesters start crossing the river,

coming into central Calcutta to attend this protest.

Hindus from buildings along the route that they were walking

would throw bricks down at them, flowerpots.

So, there were tensions bubbling, there was anger.

But even then, at the end of that first day,

the attacks were scattered, they were in different parts of the city.

What happened then, though, that night,

much bigger gangs of people, in a more organised fashion,

started going through these tiny little lanes

and setting fire to the homes of minorities.

The first victim I saw was a poor porter, Hindu,

and he had just come into this side street,

and there, Muslim men...

...broke away from a procession with an iron rod

and hit him on the head.

Every other grounding for your identity has ceased to matter,

and all that matters is, "Are you Hindu? Are you Muslim?

"You're either with us or against us."

In our area where we used to live, any stranger coming in,

they wanted to find out whether it was a Hindu or not.

If he was not a Hindu, he was murdered on the spot.

And in the morning, when the sun came up...

...there were bodies everywhere.

Trouble flared up in an orgy of looting and stabbing

during the worst riots in the history of Calcutta,

following the direct action call by Mr Jinnah,

leader of the Muslim League.

Fires raged unchecked in many places,

while pitched battles continued between Muslims and Hindus.

These were gangs attacking defenceless people.

It became almost a free for all.

And then, it was either you killed or you would be killed.

One of the Hindu gang leaders, Gopal Patha Mukherjee,

instructed his gang members they must kill ten Muslims

for every Hindu who was killed,