LONDON: Courts are taking place in London who will determine whether all private diaries and Mountbatten letters must be released to the public despite fears by the British cabinet office that they will be “prejudiced on international relations between the United Kingdom, India and Pakistan” and the violation of the Queen’s personal data .
British writer Andrew Lownie has spent £ 250,000 (Rs 2.5 Crore) from his own money in his court battle with Southampton University and cabinet office to get all the diaries and letters released in the “name of academic freedom”.
“Material related to India and Pakistan are very important because there is a big debate about how to mountbatten which is impartial on the independence and the level of relationship between Nehru with MountFatt, and what they say is very important for historians and historians of the material around the decline and family of the royal It can also provide new insights, “Lownie said during a cross on Monday.
The University of Southampton bought Broadland archives – which included Mountbattens papers – from the family of Mountbatten’s family in 2011 for £ 4.5 million.
But soon the University closed several archives, quoting directions from the cabinet office.
After complaints from Lownie, the office commissioner’s office ordered the university to reveal all Mountbatten diaries and correspondence in December 2019, but the university and cabinet office appealed to the first level of court (information rights) to this decision.
The trial is currently underway.
On Monday Clara Hamer, representing Lownie, said: “A total of £ 4.5 million from almost excusive public money is spent on obtaining the nation, documents are now included in the editor.
Even though we take educated guesses about what has been removed.
What we found was that the information was deleted as prejudice against international relations between the United Kingdom, India and Pakistan, in the book Princess Mountbattens’.
“He said in his book Pamela Mountbatten refers to Jinnah who came to dinner and said that” Jinnah’s attitude towards Sikh situation is not healthy “and that” his mother ventilation in the diary he has become Megalomania so God helps Pakistan.
” He also refers to other books, Indian summer: the final history of the final kingdom, which he said shows that “Mountbatten and Jinnah have never been friends”.
“In the case of the last former call of various unpleasant names …
so less than free comments about Jinnah already in the public domain,” Hamer said.
“It’s a waste of time for the cabinet office to crack the information in books about Mountbattens for 35 years.
Some information is completely harmless, like a conversation between Moutbatten and the Queen at the 70th birthday party when she asks her at what time He had to go to sleep and the queen said ‘this is your birthday – you have to stay up longer.’ “Rory Dunlop QC, representing the University of Southampton, shows that 99.8% of the broadlands archives have been released to the public and accusing Lownie” running an aggressive campaign in the media that attacked the university and its staff “.