On March 24, Mountbatten took charge as Viceroy and immediately set about convincing people, both the British and the Indians, that he meant business. He plunged into a round of negotiations with the leading figures of the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League as a first step towards hearing them out on issues relating to a transfer of power from the Crown to the Indian political class.

A significant, as well as clearly acknowledged, aspect of the transfer of power centred around the question of a partition of the country, given especially the earlier failure of the Cabinet Mission, in 1946, to bring the different parties to a settlement.

Additionally, there was the fresh memory of the communal riots, which had broken out in Calcutta in August 1946, spread to such places as Noakhali and claimed tens of thousands of lives among both Hindus and Muslims.

On May 3, 1947, Lord Ismay presented before the British government in London the plan, which Lord Mountbatten envisaged for Indian independence. Briefly, the plan was based on the premise that power would be transferred to India and a newly created Muslim state of Pakistan, with the provinces of Punjab and Bengal being given the option of joining either India or Pakistan in their entirety, or to split along religious lines between the two states, or going their separate ways altogether.

Significantly, the position of India's princely states remained obscure. There was, notably, a question mark over the status that the North-West Frontier Province would enjoy.

It was overwhelmingly Muslim, but was led by a government formed by the Congress. With some modifications, the British government agreed to the plan. Mountbatten had scheduled a meeting with India's politicians for May17, but intended to show them details of the plan twenty-four hours earlier as a way of letting them develop their responses.

However, much before that, the Viceroy made a trip to Simla and invited Jawaharlal Nehru and Krishna Menon to join him there. It was at that point that Mountbatten decided to show Nehru a copy of the plan Ismay had been showing around in London.

On seeing the copy, Nehru went apoplectic. He called Menon and then made it known to Mountbatten that such a plan would lead to the Balkanisation of the country. Mountbatten backtracked.

It was on May 11 that a new basis for a transfer of power was hammered out by the Viceroy and his team. The core of the amended plan was that India and Pakistan, as independent states, would enjoy Dominion status and thereby be members of the Commonwealth, which till that point had been restricted to such countries as Britain, Canada and Australia.

It was on that basis that Mountbatten sent a telegram to Ismay in London, at 9 p.m. on the day, urging that an early transfer of power from the British colonial authorities to India and Pakistan be ensured.

On May 18, with the British cabinet asking for more clarifications about the amended plan, Mountbatten flew to London. He was able to easily convince the Attlee government of his goals.

On May 20, he met the leading figures of the parliamentary opposition, notably Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, John Anderson and Lord Salisbury, all of who agreed to go along with the plan. Mountbatten and Ismay returned to Delhi on May 31.

At 10 a.m. on June 2 1947, Lord Mountbatten sat down to deliberations with the leaders of the Congress and the Muslim League. From the Congress came Nehru, Sardar Vallabhai Patel and Acharya Kripalani.

The Muslim League was represented by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan and Abdur Rab Nishtar. Sardar Baldev Singh represented the Sikh community. They were all given copies of the British government's statement, "Immediate Transfer of Power."

Mountbatten asked the participants if they had anything to say in response. Jinnah replied that his party would require a week before it could make its views known. At that point, the Viceroy asked the Muslim League leader if personally he agreed to the terms of the deal. Jinnah's affirmative response gave Mountbatten the answer he wanted.

On June 3 1947, the leaders of the Congress, the Muslim League and Baldev Singh met in a final session with Lord Mountbatten, before agreement on the partition plan could be made public.

All present gave their consent to the plan for the transfer of power. The next day, June 4, Mountbatten addressed a news conference, attended by more than 300 Indian and foreign journalists, and fielded a variety of questions, some of which were patently hostile.

As the news conference drew to a close, Mountbatten was asked when the transfer of power would actually take place. He replied that he looked to August 15, 1947. It was a statement that stunned India's politicians, especially Nehru, who thought it was too early.

Earlier, Mountbatten had had his sights on October 1, 1947 as the day on which British power in India would cease to be. Between June 4 and August 15, therefore, a gigantic operation to provide not only freedom to Indians but also to leave them with two distinct states needed to be undertaken.

It was a job fraught with risks. It was soon to plunge into unmitigated disaster. But August 15 was the day Mountbatten had decided on, despite everything negative the astrologers said about it.