The Night Before Freedom

As the countdown to independence entered its final hours, Delhi’s nerves were fraying. Reports from across the country painted the picture of a map still in motion—Baroda hedging, Kathiawar restless, Junagadh whispering of rebellion. 

In Britain, where the princely states had cultivated influence and found sympathetic ears, the Indian High Commission began receiving a stream of strange intelligence. One report described the controversial MP Denis Kendall converting a decommissioned seventy-two-foot motor launch into a yacht to smuggle gold for the Jam Saheb of Nawanagar. Another warned that Kendall, ‘a Moslem and an English Brigadier’ had approached Czech and Belgian firms for arms. 

Birth of a Nation: The Twenty-One Days That Made India, Josy Joseph, Westland Books, 2026.

In Delhi, where a small, exhausted team was managing the unravelling of a political order unlike anything the world had seen, many of these warnings barely registered, or arrived too late. 

Patel, usually the calm centre of the storm, was by early August showing signs of exasperation. Mitter’s reports from Baroda had confirmed that the Gaekwar was toying with independence; Patel refused to meet the ruler or accept his accession papers. 

Even Patel’s rebuff did not stop the Gaekwar’s defiance. In a 13 August meeting with V.P. Menon, the Baroda ruler, withdrew his reservations about signing the Instrument of Accession; however, he had already told Mitter to cancel all Independence Day celebrations. Mitter met the ruler briefly on 13 and 14 August, but they did not discuss the new developments. Instead, the ruler delegated Mitter to ask the Viceroy’s office about recognition for Sita Devi.

Mitter was convinced that Sita Devi was behind all that was going on. ‘The woman is at the bottom of it all,’ Mitter told Patel. ‘In the order which he made forbidding Independence Day celebrations in Baroda, he said there would be no independence and therefore no occasion for rejoicing,’ Mitter wrote. However, this information reached Patel only on 15 August. 

Meanwhile, some 400 kilometres away from Baroda, in the peninsula thrusting into the sea from present-day Gujarat, a final act of public machination played out. On 13 August, the Dewan of Junagadh, Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, addressed an audience of Hindus and Muslims, and said he was unhappy about the hundreds of telegrams being sent to him by members of both communities—‘myself never read any telegram’.

He assured his audience that a declaration would shortly be made that ‘Hindus and Muslims are equal to His Highness’.3 He asked if anyone from the gathering wanted to say a few words. Dayashanker Dave, speaking on behalf of the Hindus, asked the Dewan to declare if the state was going to join Pakistan or India, and read from a memorandum a group of Hindus had already submitted to the Dewan. Pointing out that nearly 82 percent of Junagadh’s population was Hindu, and that it was integrated to rest of India through economic, geographic and cultural factors, they argued that the population has a clear Indian nationality. ‘To yoke such a vast population of Hindus against their wishes to a Pakistan Government is to … negative the people’s voice and to undermine their national and traditional interests,’ they said in the submission. 

Then a Muslim member of the gathering, Kazi Akhtar, was asked to speak. He said the people cannot have any voice, ‘It lies with the Ruler to decide where to join.’ N.L. Sheth wanted to speak, but the Dewan refused permission saying only one member was allowed from a community. 

The Dewan said that Junagadh was trying to come to terms with the Dominion of India ‘but no satisfactory result ensued. Congress gives one promise one day, another next day and does not keep it,’ the Dewan said. ‘Gentlemen, do not fall in with outsiders. You have not to see whether the Junagadh Government joins Pakistan or Hindustan: you have to see to your safety and progress. Junagadh will remain the same.’ 

Bhutto concluded with a warning to the gathering not to create any disturbances and said the state would deal with any trouble firmly. 

Bhutto’s grandstanding was intended to divert attention from a secret decision already made, which would become public knowledge only on 15 August. The States Department, meanwhile, waited impatiently for Junagadh’s final decision. 

On 14 August, the States Department issued a formal order to Banesinhji that the Standstill Agreement would enable the railway police and railway judiciary to function as before. Further legal orders would be issued by Delhi, but ‘in the meantime there need be no hold up of work’, and there should not be ‘any hasty withdrawal of our police or jurisdiction’. 

The order was preceded by the comment that ‘this position holds good even in the case of States like Junagadh who may not have acceded to the Dominion by the 15th August and in whose territories railway lines passes’. 

A couple of days earlier, the Nawab of Bhopal had returned to his state to be received by a crowd that he claimed numbered about 50,000, but that his daughter said was closer to 10,000.4 They ‘would not release him until he had promised not to abdicate’, he claimed. 

Even as the Nawab was basking in the public show of loyalty by his subjects, humiliation was being heaped upon him in Delhi. His legal and constitutional adviser Zafrulla Khan received on 12 August a letter from C.C. Desai was more like a rebuke.

Desai said he was writing on behalf of Menon who was unwell, and in response to the details captured by Khan about the discussions between Lord Mountbatten, the Nawab and V.P. Menon on the afternoon of 6 August in Delhi.7 The senior official refused all of Bhopal’s major demands. ‘No assurance can be given that the Dominion Government will necessarily continue the standstill arrangements in respect of non-acceding states after August 15th. This letter is intended merely as providing a clarification of the implications of accession,’ Desai wrote, adding that it was by no means to modify ‘the provisions of Instrument of Accession which stands by itself and must be signed by an acceding state unconditionally and without any reservation’. 

Desai shot down other key demands too. The need to set up a cantonment or a military establishment in Bhopal was turned down on the grounds that the Indian Dominion cannot be at the mercy of Bhopal. ‘Here, it may be explained that, while it is reasonable that a military cantonment or establishment should not be stationed in a state without the consent of the ruler, the Dominion Government cannot bind itself to that situation. 

‘If the Dominion is primarily responsible for the defence of the country as a whole, it must have the right to move troops according to military exigencies. We can agree that no Dominion cantonment or establishment would be stationed in a state without the consent of the ruler in peace time, but we cannot for obvious reasons agree to the necessity for such consent during war,’ Desai wrote. 

As for Bhopal’s demand that it must be allowed to post its trade representatives abroad, Desai said the proposal can be agreed to on the understanding that ‘the Trade Commissioner would work as part and parcel of the office of the Dominion representative’. The representative’s activities will be confined to trade and commerce, and he will not indulge in diplomacy or politics, Desai said.

In the midst of the prevailing chaos, the interim government and various leaders were busy finalising plans for the handover ceremony. Mountbatten had not foreseen the necessity to consult astrologers. He found the astrologers ‘rather tiresome since both the 13th and the 15th have been declared inauspicious days’.8 They declared 14 August as auspicious, but officially, power needed to be transferred on 15 August. 

A solution was finally found, with the Constituent Assembly deciding to meet before midnight on 14 August and take over power as midnight strikes. Then, a delegation would go to the Viceroy’s House, which by then would have been renamed Government House, to invite Mountbatten to accept the Governor-Generalship of India. The King would by then have already appointed Mountbatten as Governor-General, because India would be a Dominion. In Pakistan, Jinnah was to assume the role of Governor-General. 

A few of the more superstitious members of the Indian Cabinet wanted the entire ceremony to be held at midnight in the Durbar Hall. But there was a problem—the older members of the Cabinet usually went to bed by 9 p.m. ‘Sleep won the swearing-in battle over superstition,’ Mountbatten noted. 

The Viceroy may have been exaggerating, but the official committee putting together the ceremonies had already scheduled the swearing-in ceremony of the new Cabinet for 8.30 a.m. on 15 August in the presence of 500 invited guests. After that, the Cabinet was to proceed to the Constituent Assembly, which would henceforth become the Legislative Assembly of India. 

For most of India, it was the hour of celebration. For the small team in the States Department, however, it was a night of unanswered cables—from Hyderabad, Junagadh, Indore and Bhopal.

The empire was ending. But its fragments were still moving, quietly, in the dark.

Josy Joseph is an investigative journalist and author.

Excerpted with permission from Birth of a Nation: The Twenty-One Days That Made India, by  Josy Joseph, Westland Books.

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