The UK government is spending a lot of money to keep documents and letters related to Edwina Mountbatten and her husband Lord Mountbatten a secret. A report by WION has stated that diaries and some letters, correspondence between the two, especially those from the years around India’s partition, are being buried by the UK government.
The WION report stated that an author named Andrew Lownie has demanded to see those documents and the British government wants to prevent the author from accessing those. The UK government fears that if made public, those documents can damage the relationship between India, Pakistan and the UK.
Edwina Mountbatten’s ‘special’ relationship with India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is not a secret and many experts even argue that Nehru had jeopardised India’s national interests because of his relationship with Edwina. WION reports that in one letter, Edwina had written to Nehru, “I hate to see you drive away in the morning. You left me with a strange sense of peace. Perhaps, I brought you the same?” Nehru’s reply was, “Life is a dreary business”.
Author takes UK govt to court
Author Andrew Lownie had petitioned the British government to release the Mountbatten documents and had successfully obtained most of them under British Freedom of Information Law. However, documents related to the year 1947-48 were not released. The documents include several diaries and letters written by the Mountbatten couple.
As per the WION report, the British government is fighting tooth and nail to protect those documents and has so far spent over 600,000 pounds (USD 800,000) to protect them.
As reported by TOI, during a tribunal hearing recently, Lownier’s lawyer Clara Hamers stated that Lord Mountbatten’s diary entry on July 12, 1947 revealed that he had dinner with British judge Cyril Radcliffe, the chairman of the boundary commission, and Christopher Beaumont, his secretary. But the diary entry from the next day has been redacted by the British government saying that the details can jeopardise Britain’s relationship with India and Pakistan.
Hamer stated that July 12, 1947, was a time period when Mountbatten was not supposed to have contact with Radcliffe. The diary entry for August 6, 1947, has been redacted too. The redaction of the documents raises several questions about Mountbatten’s role in India’s partition and the subsequent violence that killed thousands of people. It also raises questions on the conduct of Nehru, India’s perspective PM at that time and how far his personal attachment with Edwin affected India’s national interests at that time.
Highly sensitive, says curator
As reported by Times of India, Professor Chris Woolgar, retired archivist and curator at the University of Southampton Library, which has those documents, stated before the tribunal that it was him who had informed the British cabinet office about the nature and sensitivity of those Mountbatten documents, adding that it has details about the UK royal family and partition that can create tension with India and Pakistan.
Woolgar stated at the tribunal that the cabinet office had responded within 3 hours, agreeing that the documents are sensitive and should be closed.
The documents were a part of Broadlands archives, stored in over 4500 boxes, that include 47 volumes of Lord Mountbatten’s diaries and 36 volumes of Edwina Mountbatten. They were held at Broadlands House, the Mountbattens’ family estate and were sold to the University of Southampton. The University of Southampton had used several million pounds of public money to purchase those documents, as per reports.
The University of Southampton is also refusing to share letters between Edwina and Nehru, saying that it just stores them and doesn’t own them.
Lord Louis Mountbatten was a maternal uncle of Prince Phillip and the second cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. He was the former governor-general of India. He was very close to the UK royal family and was like a father figure to Prince Charles.
