The Long Farewell

Even in the early Victorian era, idealistic Britons foresaw that one day India would be capable of self-government. The British themselves fostered Indian political aspirations. In 1885 a Scotsman, Allan Octavian Hume, founded the Congress movement. The Great War of 1914-18 proved the turning point. Indians felt they had won their title to nationhood on the battlefield. British concessions were never big enough to satisfy Indian leaders like Gandhi and Nehru and the British were soon locked in a fierce struggle with the nationalists. To get themselves out of India after the Second World War, the British chose as their last viceroy the kind of single-minded man of action who had got them there in the first place - a Robert Clive in reverse - Lord Louis Mountbatten.