LONDON: The question mark has been raised in court in London for the impartiality of Lord Mountbatten and whether he tried to disrupt the limit withdrawn between India and Pakistan in the partition.
The accusation was carried out during the hearing of the first court (information rights) about whether all private diaries and correspondence between Lord and Lady Mountbatten – held by the Southampton University in the Broadlands archive – must be published.
Clara Hamer, representing the British writer Andrew Lownie, who has written a book in Mountbattens and seeks full disclosure of Mountbatten’s paper, told the court that Lord Mountbatten’s diary entry on July 12, 1947 revealed that he had dinner with British judge Sir Cyril Radcliffe, Chair The boundary commission, and Christopher Beaumont, his secretary, but the diary entry since the day after being removed on the basis that he can reduce English relations with India and Pakistan.
Hamer said: “The problem of whether Mountbatten was impartial and the facts he met with Radcliffe and Beaumont on that date was an important problem because this was one time he should not experience contact with them and this could be proof of lack of impartiality by Lord Mountbatten.
I want to ask What was removed on July 13, 1947 was associated with dinner the night before and was related to drawing Pakistani boundaries.
And, there is a very strong public interest in full transparency on the problem.
“Hamer also questioned why the Mountbatten diary entry began August 6, 1947 – one week before independence – has been removed.
“This will be a public interest and it is important for historians who want to understand the events during independence,” he said.
He said Lownie had taken educated guesses that it was a joint defense council meeting, which will be attended by Mountbatten.
On Wednesday’s retired archives and curators at the Southampton University Library, Professor Chris Woolgar, defended his decision to remind the office of the cabinet for “very sensitive” materials in the Mountbatten paper, which was related to India and Pakistan, which he found after receiving them, which caused them Closed.
The court heard that the cabinet office responded to his email within three hours, agreed to certain files must be closed, by saying, “material related to India and Pakistan are very sensitive from this period.” Broadlands archives, consisting of 4,500 boxes, which include 47 volumes of Diaries Lord Mountbatten and 36 volumes of Lady Mountbatten’s diary, held at Broadlands House, The Mountbatten Family Estate near Romsey, and transferred to universities in more than eight trucks.
Between the 1980s and 2010.
In 2011, the university bought a broadlands archive from Trustees using several million pounds of public money.
Lownie also searched for disclosure of correspondence between Lady Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru, who was also in storage in Southampton, but Southampton said he did not have it and only save it, even though it had the choice to buy it.