Mountbatten and Partition Again

"The viceroy, Mountbatten, must take the blame - though not the sole blame - for the massacres in the Punjab in which between 500,000 to a million men, women and children perished," he writes.

Not me this time, but off the BBC news website today. The 'he' in 'he writes' is Christopher Beaumont who in 1947 was the private secretary to Sir Cyril Radcliffe, chairman of the Indo-Pakistan Boundary Commission. His papers are being released by his son.

More quotes from the BBC.

"The central theme ever present in Beaumont's historic paperwork is that Mountbatten not only bent the rules when it came to partition - he also bent the border in India's favour. The documents repeatedly allege that Mountbatten put pressure on Radcliffe to alter the boundary in India's favour. "

"Beaumont goes on to argue that it was "irresponsible" of Lord Mountbatten to insist that Beaumont complete the boundary within a six-week deadline - despite his protests."

The Mountbattens

Heard a bit on the radio the other day that Mountbatten's daughter, (the family name is actually German, Battenberg), was writing a book about the time she was India during independence and the partition. Seeing that I was attacking Tariq Ali, the Bhuttos and rich Pakistani families the other day, maybe another look at how this single religion state came about is order.

Mountbatten must have been just about the worst choice to have as the last governor of the British Raj. This was Attlee's mistake and was partly to blame for the up to a million butchered during the partition. Churchill seemed to like having Mountbatten a fair distance away and it does seem he was behind not allowing the royal family's name to become Mountbatten.

Anyway Jinnah must have been thinking, what's the use of negotiating with this Englishmen while the Englishman's wife is screwing his Hindu rival, Nehru. Mountbattens, Windsors, Battenbergs and Saxe-Coburg-Gothas, we would be better off without them.