The Viceroy and Governor General Lord Wavell was considered a failure in Indian politics since he could not agree the Congress and the Muslim League on the issue of the appointment of Muslim members to the Viceroy's Council at the Simla meeting of June 1945. When Bengal and Bihar were bathed in blood due to the direct action taken by the Muslim League in August 1946, Viceroy Wavell's credibility in India was completely destroyed.
In his place Lord Mountbatten was made the Viceroy of India in March 1947. Lord Mountbatten's full name was Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas George Mountbatten. He was also called the First Earl-Mountbatten of Burma. He was the Prince of Bettenberg and a member of the British royal family.
Mountbatten was an Admiral in the British Navy. The British government had given him the titles KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, FRS etc. He was born on 25 June 1900 in England. Lord Mountbatten was the maternal uncle of Prince Philip (Duke of Edinburgh), husband of Queen Elizabeth II of England.
He was the last Viceroy of India and the first Governor-General of independent India. Lord Mountbatten's personality was very brilliant due to having a clear vision and being rich in settled ideas. He was an influential orator, skilled general and one of the well-known people of England. Due to the strategic successes achieved for Britain, Mountbatten was able to get what he wanted from the Parliament of England.
Although he was a supporter of democracy, being a member of the British royal family and being familiar with the history of Britain, he had special sympathy for the Indian kings. His wife Edwina was the master of simple nature and gentle thoughts. She was known to go to the battlefield to treat the wounded, to do public welfare and to help her husband in his work.
Lord Ismay was appointed Chief-of-Staff of Mountbatten. Ismay was a mature officer. He had been the chief-of-staff of the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill between 1940 and 45 AD. Alan Campbell Johnson was appointed Press Briefcase for Mountbatten. He had been working in the staff of Mountbatten since AD 1939.
Sir George Abell, a senior officer of the Indian Civil Service, was appointed Private Secretary to Lord Mountbatten. He had worked as Private Secretary to the Governor of Punjab and Private Secretary to Lord Wavell, so he had a good knowledge of India's problems.
George Abel told Mountbatten that the present condition of India is like a ship from which flames are rising and whose womb is full of gunpowder. The whole fight is about whether the fire will reach the gunpowder first or we must have controlled it before that.
Sir Conard Corfield was appointed as the political advisor to the Viceroy Lord Mountbatten and the Secretary of the Political Department. He was the son of a missionary and came to India as an officer of the Indian Civil Service at the time of Lord Reading in AD 1920. His work was more with the Indian princely states.
He was appointed as a political agent in Hyderabad, Rewa, Jaipur and some other Indian princely states. At the time of Lord Wavell, he was made Crown Representative i.e. Political Advisor to the Viceroy. His job was to act as a bridge between Wavell and the native kings. Due to spending almost his entire life with Indian kings, he was more popular among native-kings and did not like Indian leaders.
The Nawab of Hyderabad was his friend. Therefore, the corefields were preferred by Muslim rulers rather than Hindu kings. Lord Mountbatten could not understand this weakness of Corfield's personality in time. Therefore, later on Mountbatten had to be humiliated in front of Indian leaders like Sardar Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru.
Lord Mountbatten's job as Viceroy and Governor General in India was only to liberate India and take the British out of India safely with their full dignity and peace. Mountbatten took over as the Viceroy and Governor General of India on 24 March 1947.
At that time India was stuck in a very strange situation. The population of the country was about 35 crore, out of which 10 crore were Muslim and 25 crore were Hindus and other religions. The Congress was the largest political party in the country which believed that it was led by 100 percent Hindus, Sikhs and other religions and 90 percent by Muslims. Whereas the Muslim League believed that the League had the support of 90 percent of the country's Muslims.
The Congress wanted the British to leave India by handing over the power of India to the Congress. The Muslim League wanted the British to first divide India and create a separate country for the Muslims. After that they liberate India. The power of the Hindu-majority country should go to the Congress and the power of the Muslim-majority country to the Muslim League. The third big side was also of Indian kings who did not want to liberate India and hand over 565 princely states to the Congress.
Communist parties working in India and political parties with nationalist and Hindu influence, especially Hindu Mahasabha, wanted that the British should not divide India, India should be united and its power should be handed over to all the political parties of India, not only to the Congress. And democracy should be established in the country. Sikhs, Dalits, Christians and Anglo-Indians also had their own sides.
Mountbatten had to deal with all these elements, satisfy them and take the British officers, British soldiers, their families, their properties and their horses etc. safely out of India to England. Mountbatten also had to make arrangements that at the time when the Royal armies were leaving India, the miscreants, hooligans and murderers should not harm the innocent people of India by attacking them.
The Indian people should celebrate the freedom ceremony, their property, dungeons should be safe and women should not be raped. Achieving so many goals at once was no joke. In this sense, Lord Mountbatten had to work harder than all the Viceroys before him, even more than those who conquered India for England.
Mountbatten, in his first speech in India, said that his office would no longer be that of a general Viceroy. They have come to transfer power by June 1948 in the context of the announcement of the British government and to find a solution to India's problem in a few months.
Mountbatten sent his first report to the Attlee government on 2 April 1947, in which he wrote that- 'Internal tensions in the country have gone out of bounds. No matter how quickly action is taken, there is a danger of civil war starting. '
Mountbatten held talks with Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Liaquat Ali and Patel. These leaders told Mountbatten what they thought about the independence and partition of India and what they wanted to solve the problem of India.