A Very Private Celebrity (26 page)

Indians felt they were entering a new era too. With the death of ‘Panditji' Nehru after seventeen years of shaping Indian independence, the sophisticated Indians of New Delhi were hoping for the end of the
maa-baap sarkar
, that is the paternalistic ‘mother and father state' of the Congress Party that had smothered India politically and socially since 1947. There was a growing sense of liberation. This was reflected in the parties the Freemans gave at the residency. The writer Prem Shankar Jha told me that they were like going into ‘a room full of fresh air'
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and the novelist Khushwant Singh agreed. Both gave the credit to Catherine. ‘I found Freeman cold and distant,' Khushwant Singh wrote, ‘despite his socialist pretensions he behaved like a pukka sahib',
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meaning in this context an aloof administrator of the Raj.

One of their visitors was Tom Driberg. He agreed that John Freeman was spoken of with respect rather than affection, since ‘he retained his cool, withdrawn (though courteous) manner'. Catherine, on the other hand, was the subject of affection because she was most definitely not a patronising, affected, memsahib:

So the Freemans' entertaining had none of the stiffness of the Raj. They attracted a diverse assortment of cultivated guests without the Raj protocol and strict hierarchy. Catherine's own production skills came into play when she was planning a party for top civil servants out from London:

Catherine loved the Indian experience and sought it out. John stayed more in the High Commission, hearing about it from her. ‘He sends me out into the market place and tells me to report back to him,'
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she said at the time. During the Bihar drought of 1967, he allowed Catherine to travel by Jeep through the stricken villages in order to write a report for the Foreign Office. Afterwards she raised funds to build wells in remote parts of the country to she staged the premier of the film
Shakespeare Wallah
as a glamorous fund-raising event. The writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was there with the director James Ivory and the producer Ismail Merchant. All became good friends. The actors Madhur Jaffrey and Marlon Brando came too.

‘Camelot in Delhi' Driberg called the socialising at the residency, referencing Kennedy's Washington – but it was often Camelot without the King. ‘Of course, John was there,' Catherine says:

When he did stay he would seek out the company of young journalists. The First Secretary at the High Commission was Robin, now Lord, Renwick:

The young Rimingtons found themselves stuck in the High Commission compound where they were welcomed by the last British chief justice of the Punjab and the British chief administrator of Madras, both of whom had moved to the Indian civil service after independence and were still in post. It was ‘the Anglo-Indian community, some still clinging to their topis',
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she said metaphorically. On one occasion the Rimingtons had the Freemans to dinner and Stella, lectured in advance about the protocol of such visits, became anxious when a fat Indian woman sat on the right-hand end of the settee, the place formally reserved for the High Commissioner.

When Stella Rimington observed that the British were ‘out of favour', a point picked up by Lord Mountbatten, she was not referring to the last fluttering of the Raj, embarrassing though that might be to hard-headed realists. The cause was the Indo–Pakistan War (the
‘three-week war', as Freeman called it), which broke out in August 1965. This major conflict, leading to one of the biggest tank battles since the Second World War and, Freeman reported, ‘causing in India more excitement than any other news since 1947',
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quickly escalated to draw in the super powers. On the diplomatic front Freeman was heavily involved. On behalf of the UK, he found himself incurring the fury of the Indian government and at the same time he was ‘driven to despair' by the attitude of the British government, in particular by Prime Minister Harold Wilson. It was a baptism of fire no diplomat would relish, least of all one so new to diplomacy.

Since 1949 a jittery ceasefire had existed between the two powers on the Indian subcontinent partitioned in 1947, India and Pakistan. The bone of contention was the beautiful Vale of Kashmir, which both countries claimed as their own – the Pakistanis because most Kashmiris were Muslim and the Indians because the ruler, the Hindu Maharaja of Kashmir, Hari Singh, had acceded his state to India. Since then Indian and Pakistan armies had been camped either side of a ceasefire line monitored by the United Nations. The Indian government refused to hold the agreed plebiscite until the Pakistan Army, which had originally begun hostilities in 1947, withdrew.

In order to test Indian resolve for border conflict, in April 1965 the 6th Brigade of the Pakistan Army launched Operation Desert Hawk several hundred miles to the south in the Rann of Kutch. This desolate region of salt marshes is partly in the Indian state of Gujarat with the Arabian Sea to the west, and partly in the Pakistani province of Sind to the north. One visitor described it as ‘a reeking reach of black tidal mudflats bounded with sand dunes and etched by dead streams of salt and scum'; uninhabited save by a few camel herdsmen. ‘It seemed ridiculous', wrote Freeman to the CRO, ‘that two countries should quarrel so fiercely over a barren tract of land.'
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The
Pakistan intention, however, was not ridiculous. It was to conquer a tract of land, bloody the nose of the Indian Army, wait for the UK to arbitrate between two Commonwealth countries and then agree to peace terms that would not include surrendering the land taken. This is what eventually happened at the end of June, but not before the two states threatened a general war against each other that could have led, wrote Freeman, ‘to the double shock of widespread military conflict and communal massacre on a vast scale'.
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Freeman and his opposite number in Karachi, Morrice James, acquitted themselves well in the successful negotiations, much to the pleasure of Harold Wilson, who received a note of congratulation from Lyndon Johnson, President of the United States, and the thanks of Lal Bahadur Shastri, the new Prime Minister of India. The British arbitration proved that ‘credit was still good in the subcontinent', wrote Freeman but he added, ominously: ‘We have remedied a symptom but the basic
malaise
still exists.'
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On the night of 5–6 August, Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar. Over 1,000 Pakistani insurgents in civilian clothes crossed the 500-mile-long ceasefire line that had separated Indian and Pakistani forces in the Kashmir since the end of the first war in July 1949. This was the start of the second Indo–Pakistan War. Pakistan was clearly the aggressor and the paper trail shows that Freeman pointed this out to the CRO from the beginning. Yet in a most unfortunate statement that he later tried to excuse, Prime Minister Wilson blamed India, thus causing lasting resentment between the two countries. Wilson's gaffe, which he made worse with subsequent attempts to wriggle out of responsibility, cannot have improved Freeman's opinion of him, to say the least.

This is the story: the aim of the Pakistani insurgents in disguise was first to foment disorder leading to a popular uprising against Indian
rule. Then regular Pakistani forces would enter the Kashmir on the pretext of restoring law and order. This would lead, President Ayub Khan hoped, to the external powers, led by Britain and the United States, stepping in and brokering a Kashmir settlement – to Pakistan's advantage. On 8 August, the Indian Minister of External Affairs, C. S. Jha, briefed the British High Commissioner about the Pakistan insurgency. Lest there be any doubt, the Pakistan newspaper
Dawn
carried the headline the next day: ‘Revolutionary Council Held in Kashmir: Liberation War to be Waged'. Freeman reported all this to the CRO in his fortnightly summary of 17–30 August: ‘The Indians are satisfied that they have ample evidence that Pakistan planned and organised a massive infiltration into Kashmir under the guise of a liberation movement.' He further reported on 25 August that the UN military observer, General Nimmo, was ‘amazed and aghast' at the Pakistan infiltration and had warned General Chaudhuri, the Indian commander-in-chief, that there was more of it coming: ‘suspicions of reserves, activity etc. behind the ceasefire line'.
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On 28 August the Indian Army went on the offensive, crossed the ceasefire line in Kashmir and engaged enemy forces.

The attempt to raise a revolution in the Kashmir having failed, on 1 September Pakistan significantly escalated the conflict with Operation Grand Slam, an armoured thrust across not only the ceasefire line but also the international border dividing the two states in the Chamb area to the south of Kashmir. This endangered the Indian town of Jammu, sandwiched between the Vale of Kashmir and the Daman Koh Plains to the south. Jammu was of huge strategic importance to India because through it ran the only road linking India with Kashmir and beyond that to Ladakh, to the north of which Indian troops were facing the Chinese, who had successfully wrested land from India in 1962. The Pakistan Foreign Minister
Bhutto declared: ‘We have taken a solemn pledge to [end India's] barbaric policy of eliminating the Muslim majority in Kashmir by Hitlerite extermination.'
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On 2 September an Indian air strike on Chamb failed to dislodge Pakistani forces and the ensuing tank battle, considered the largest since the Second World War, was similarly unsuccessful. On 3 September the UN and the British government called for a ceasefire.

Three days later the Indian I and XI corps retaliated by a surprise lateral move. The army crossed the Indo–Pakistan border in the Punjab and headed for Lahore, Pakistan's cultural capital. This was greeted in Delhi by wild scenes of enthusiasm, reminding someone at the High Commission of the public reaction in Europe to the outbreak of war in 1914. Vigilantes roamed the capital rounding up suspected Pakistani agents, causing another High Commission official to warn ‘to be a Muslim is now to be in some degree of danger'.
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In the UK, Wilson told journalists that: ‘The war between India and Pakistan is one of the gravest international developments since the end of the war against Japan.'
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He responded by another call for a ceasefire ‘in the most urgent terms'.

It was then, on 6 September, that the British Prime Minister deeply offended India, with enduring consequences. No. 10 Downing Street issued a public statement expressing Wilson's deep concern at ‘the increasingly serious fighting, especially at the news that Indian forces have today attacked Pakistan territory across the international frontier in the Punjab'. The Indian offensive, the press statement went on, was ‘a distressing response to the resolution adopted by the security council calling for a ceasefire'.
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Wilson then asked Shastri to ensure that British weapons sent to India for use against the Chinese were not used against Pakistan.

Wilson's accusation caused a furious, self-righteous response. Shastri
wrote to Wilson that the culprit was Pakistan, whose regular forces ‘had launched a massive attack across the international boundary between the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and the West Punjab in Pakistan'.
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The Indian High Commissioner in London said that Wilson's press statement would be received with anger not only in the Indian Parliament but throughout the world. ‘Why was India pilloried without a mention of Pakistan's similar violations?'
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Wilson was chastened. He called off any further attempts to broker a ceasefire, leaving it to the United Nations.

Where did this leave High Commissioner Freeman? He was frustrated and embarrassed. He had reported the true sequence of events punctually. He had warned Wilson on 6 September against calling for a ceasefire: ‘I feel obliged to express my view that any appeal to India to cease fire, which is made by our Prime Minister would be at this stage useless and might even serve to weaken any influence we might be able to start later.'
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He now wrote that Wilson's call for military equipment to be withheld had caused ‘particular resentment'. ‘Britain's popularity in India,' he wrote to the CRO on 13 September, ‘has taken a severe knock as a result of our open criticism of India's escalation of the conflict.' Wilson had jumped in ‘with indecent haste' and scotched the Indian view that a Labour government was much less likely than its Conservative predecessor to display a pro-Pakistan bias. At the same time he thought that India was ‘largely to blame' for the reaction in Britain because its publicity machine was inert and Pakistan's much superior. He gave as an example of this Wilson's criticism made to the Indian High Commissioner on 7 September of ‘India's bombing of “open cities” including Karachi and Rawalpindi'. This was false information that had certainly not come from Freeman, but nor had it been refuted by the Indian government.
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