Men of Straw

The book, Men of Straw, details a troubled period in India's history, i.e., the crucial two years of India's Independence and partition. The 'Men of Straw' are India's leaders whose inept handling of the situation led to the bloodbath of partition. The book begins by describing the partition of the country as one of the mass murders of history. In that case, who were the men responsible for causing the deaths of so many? Here is the plot of a Whodunit. It then goes on to describe the historical record of events from 1920 right up to 1947, the year of Independence and partition. Mountbatten, the master of rush tactics, was sent by Attlee to impose some kind of settlement in India and withdraw quickly. By this time, events were in a fearful muddle. Mountbatten has candidly admitted there was no way he could have prevented the Punjab carnage after March 1947. All parties involved in the dispute, the Congress, the League and the British, joined hands to supress the details of the tragedy and its extent. It took about twenty years for the real facts to emerge. Muslim terrorist groups, trained by the League, and actively supported by the British were turned on the Russians in Afghanistan. With the collapse of world communism, Islamic fundamentalism emerged as the main threat to civilization. The British and the Americans had themselves given rise to a jinn which refused to go quietly back into its bottle. The terrorist camps in Pakistan were taken over by the al Qaeda and the Taliban and America elevated to the role of the Great Satan. It took some time for Washington to realize that they were financially backing a group bent on destroying America itself. Was the quality of true statesmanship lacking in all these gentlemen which led to a horrible fracas so easily preventable in the '30s? That is why Winston Churchill called them all 'Men of Straw'. His statements were dismissed as imperialistic, anti-Indian and wide off the facts. Modern research has shown that much of what he said was true. He was not on speaking terms with Mountbatten for a long time because of the terrible things he did in India. Churchill's estimation of about two million killed in a single month (September 1947), it now turns out, is sickeningly real. Even Himmler would have been proud of this kind of devastation. Gandhi's ahimsa had created more trouble for the Punjab than the invasion of Timur.