Britain's Inability to Rule
Britain no longer had the power to maintain control over British India.
Britain had just concluded World War 2, where it spent a total of about 120 billion dollars, and maintaining the colony of India required money and resources it did not have. Although 120 billion dollars does not seem like a crippling amount, the money Britain spent was in mid 20th century currency USD, thus making it a significant, staggering cost that hindered Britain’s ability to maintain overseas colonies such as Britain, leading to Britain’s dwindling power in British India.
Dr. John Darwin speaks on Britain's military capability after World War 2
{Britain, the Commonwealth and the End of Empire, 2011}
Britain's wartime expenditure relative to GDP
{Sharma, 2024}
Mountbatten's inability to control the government
{Economic Times, 2024}
Mountbatten’s intuition that waiting until June 1948, Attlee’s deadline for Mountbatten, would be too late was correct as Mountbatten was losing power and if he waited, Mountbatten might not have had enough power to oversee the transition. Mountbatten’s correct assumption, affirmed by Rajagopalachari, that waiting till Prime Minister Attlee’s deadline would end in Britain never being able to oversee the transition due to the increasing power of the Muslim and Hindu communities in British India shows how Britain did not have enough power to oversee the partition at a later date.