An American Witness to India’s Partition By Phillips Talbot, Sage, Rs720

Towards the end of the Thirties, a young American scholar, Phillips Talbot, was sent to India to observe and report on the situation here. He studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London for about a year from October 1938 before travelling to India towards the end of 1939. An American Witness to India’s Partition is a collection of his letters written between 1938 and 1950, documenting the pre-war years in Britain and the tumultuous times before and after the birth of India and Pakistan. Written with the objectivity that only an unbiased outsider can command, these letters offer an engaging perspective on those fateful days and on the men who brought about the “tryst with destiny”.

Talbot’s letters reveal a sensible yet sympathetic mind. It is a mind that was not swayed by excesses of emotion even in critical circumstances, like the Calcutta riots of 1946, but could feel acutely for the poor Indian peasant. It helps that, as historian B.R. Nanda says in the Foreword, Talbot had no “axe to grind”. He could thus interact as freely with Jawaharlal Nehru or Muhammad Ali Jinnah as with the common people of the country and appreciate the point of view of each.

Talbot’s presence in India during the crucial years could not but involve him in the fate of the two emerging nations. He felt that he was witnessing a country poised on the brink of “terrific and...violent changes”. He tries to impartially judge the cause of the Muslim nation but comes to the conclusion that Partition would be “a backward step”. Talbot realized that communal dissent was the force that threatened “to tear the country apart”. Sadly, it continues to be the most persistent threat to the integrity of the nation even after six decades of Independence. There would be much in common between Talbot’s picture of riot-ravaged Calcutta — with his description of thousands of corpses lying on the street, rotting under the blazing sun or burning in mass pyres —and one of Ahmedabad in 2002. Talbot foresaw that Gandhi’s creed of non-violence would die with him as much of its efficacy depended on the charisma of the man. Walking with Gandhi in Noakhali, Talbot observed that Gandhi’s “approach is that of a prophet to a basic human problem, and prophets work for future generations”.

Talbot’s letters are consistently ‘proper’ — there is a note of self-censorship and restraint even in the documentation of events that could have warranted an impudent comment or two. (For a “non-technical” and “purely feminine” commentary on the days of transfer of power, one can check out the letter of Talbot’s wife, Mildred). This particular feature of Talbot’s style might have as much to do with the seriousness of the author as with the fact that he was writing the letters to his boss in the United States of America.

Talbot’s primness notwithstanding, some of his comments are quite entertaining. For instance, Talbot observes that Gandhi prefaced most of his explanations with the phrase, “for the simple reason that...”. “It intrigued me to hear that goat’s milk is good, or the British should leave India...all for some “simple reason””, writes Talbot. Then he notes Mountbatten pointing at a rainbow in the sky as he unfurls the Indian tricolour on August 15 and the crowd going mad with joy. However, Talbot is clearly beaten by his wife in making anecdotal comments. She observes in her delightful letter that Jinnah “looked like a walking, talking corpse.”