Posted on 07/20/2007 12:29:00 PM PDT by CarrotAndStick
NEW DELHI: Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India, had advanced independence by nine months from June 1948 to August 1947 because of his desperation to leave the affairs of the country to the people, according to his daughter Pamela Hicks.
In an interview, Hicks said, "It was essential that this was brought forward... it was time for India to cope with her own problems."
Mountbatten, she said, held that partition was "completely unreal, crazy and unworkable". The reason for this haste was his wife Edwina's opposition to his taking over as governor general.
Hicks disagreed that partition of the subcontinent was the result of a British government decision to set a firm date for independence. "My father thought that the whole thing was nonsense, the whole thing was unworkable... the partition of India seemed crazy to him," she said.
Ultimately, Mountbatten agreed to serve as only governor general of India as the Indian leaders persuaded him that they needed him.
Hicks strongly denied that her father was pro-Congress, pro-Indian and anti-Muslim League.
"It's entirely unjustified," she said. The book has references to Mountbatten's personal adverse comments on Mohammad Ali Jinnah and his insistence on partition.
Well, that may be. But Nehru was shagging Hicks' mother from Day One. How's that for "pro-Congress"?
We need to partition Iraq. Iraq is the creation of an english guy with a map and a pencil, constructed of three former provinces of the Ottoman empire.
They do not want to live together (to the extent that they do, its that some of them want to rule over others).
It is because they do not want to live together that the country is only stable when run by a murderous dictatorship.
Split it up, and let’s go home.
Much like that last country we got involved in, Yugoslavia.
Heh hehe!
Some news on that here...
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/nothing-physical-between-my-mother-pt-nehru/45065-3.html
‘Nothing physical between my mother, Pt Nehru’
London: Lord Mountbatten’s daughter Pamela Mountbatten says there was deep love between her mother Edwina and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Speaking exclusively to CNN-IBN, Lady Pamela also said that speculation that there was any kind of physical aspect to the relationship was misplaced.
Karan Thapar: In your introduction you write - “towards the end of the 15 months we spent in India, the immediate attraction between my mother and Panditji blossomed into love.” What do you mean by love?
Pamela Mountbatten: I mean a very deep love, the kind of love that the knights of old...esoteric love really, nowadays everybody assumes that it has to be a carnal love, but you can just have as deep and emotional love with two like souls in a way, people who really grow to understand each other, and be able to listen to each other and to complement each other and find solace in each other.
Karan Thapar: In you book you write with incredible candour - “ my mother had already had lovers, my father was inured to it.” But then you add - “ the relationship with Nehru remained platonic. Can you be really sure of that?
Pamela Mountbatten: I would say yes, because anyway, Nehru was a very honourable man, who liked my father - there was great affection between the two. And it was nearly always in my father’s houses - either in England or in India that they were together and I think he would have never dishonoured his freind’s...
My mother was so happy with Jawaharlal, she knew that she was helping him at a time when it’s lonely at the pinnacle of power, it really is, and if she could help, and my father knew that it helped her, because a woman can after a long marriage feel frustrated and perhaps neglected if somebody’s working terribly hard. And so if a new affection comes into her life, a new admiration, she blossoms and she is happy.
Karan Thapar: So both of them in a sense fulfilled a need. Jawaharlal and Edwina needed each other.
Pamela Mountbatten: I think they did, and my father understood that need, and of course it made my mother - who could be quite difficult at times, as many extraordinary women can be - happy. And yet this time when she was so happy with everybody you know, it was lovely to be with her, when there were no prickles.
Karan Thapar: You say that the Edwina-Nehru relationship was also of use to your father as viceroy, that he often appealed to Panditji through the influence your mother had, and that this was particularly useful in handling tricky situations like Kashmir.
Pamela Mountbatten: That is true and he did use her like that, but he certainly wasn’t going to throw her. He didn’t say to her ‘go and become the Prime Minister’s lover because I need you to intercede.’ It was a by-product of this deep relationship...
Karan Thapar: Absolutely, he realised that there was an emotional relationship he could use for the betterment of everyone.
Pamela Mountbatten: Absolutely.
Karan Thapar: Many people in India believe that, in fact, the decision that Jawaharlal took to refer Kashmir to the United Nations, was taken under your father’s advise. Could that have been an area where your mother’s influence could have been particularly useful?
Pamela Mountbatten: I think it could have been, because Panditji being a Kashmiri of course - you know inevitably the emotional side comes in from one’s own country, doesn’t it? And my father just in dry conversation mightn’t have been able to to get his viewpoint over. But with my mother translating it for Panditji, and you know appealing to his heart more than his mind, that he should really behave like this - I think probably that did happen.
Karan Thapar: Panditji was a widower, he needed female affection, he must have wanted it. Your mother was alluring and beautiful, they were so close to each other, it would be natural for the emotional to become sexual.
Pamela Mountbatten: It could be, and maybe everybody will think I’m being very naive, but the fact that she had had lovers in the past, somehow this was so different, it really was.
Watch a special and exclusive two-part interview with Lady Pamela Mountbatten in Devil’s Advocate on Sunday at 8:30 pm on CNN-IBN.
From Wiki:
Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas George Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC (25 June 1900 – 27 August 1979) was a British admiral and statesman and an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Independent India
He was the last Viceroy and first Governor-General of independent India, and First Sea Lord, as was his father, Prince Louis of Battenberg.
He was killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), who planted a bomb in his boat at Mullaghmore, County Sligo in the Republic of Ireland.
27 August 1979. I remember that day well.
Iraq should split up - after all, the new state of Iraq is explicitly designed to split up in its constitution - but there’s no need to clear out. The new states will be very happy to have Coalition forces on board - and we should stay there to avoid Jihadic infiltration.
All the provinces are haggling over Oil Revenue. It’s like a couple & their lawyers divvying up the family assets. Once that’s done, Iraq can have an amicable divorce.
It appears that Pandit might have had more than Lady Edwina in mind when considering who would share his ....
Lord Mountbatten, Nehru, and Edwina share an oblivious/lighthearted moment.
One of the greatest ironies of India is the failure of British authority, whose cause is seldom mentioned. It can be traced to a singular, and odd, beginning: the arrival of large numbers of British women in India.
To explain, when the British East India Company became the British Raj, or colonial ruler of India backed by the British Army, over time what evolved was an effective administration of the giant nation. An essential element of this administration was that British men in the government and the British Army took to themselves Indian mistresses and wives in the absence of British women.
These Indian women gave both the government and the military an extensive channel of communication with the people of India. This allowed them to detect and take care of problems long before they became critical. In return, the women also provided a conduit for the people to contact the government.
But within a short time after a change in policy, which allowed for large numbers of British women to travel to India, the system came to a halt. The British women wanted no Indian wives or mistresses, and demanded strong policies curbing the interracial practice.
From that moment, the collapse of effective British government began. It would lead to bloody mutinies and other violent conflict, and an overall inability to communicate in either direction. The eventually departure of the British colonizers was almost guaranteed.
Also from that moment, from the Indian perspective, the British government suddenly became disconnected and cruel, no longer able to administer and seemingly indifferent to where the country was heading.
But in retrospect, the Indians still benefit greatly from the time in which the British did manage things properly; and to their credit, the Indians retained and continue to use many of the better practices of their colonizers.
The current Green Line in Cyprus is the creation of another “British Guy” in 1964. Ten years before the turkish invasion of nothern Cyprus.
Are you saying that if the British women had not objected to their husbands having Indian mistresses, that the rule of India would have worked out better? Well, that’s the flimsiest excuse I have ever heard from a man for having an affair!
Sixty years after partition (and no end in sight)!
“Hicks strongly denied that her father was pro-Congress, pro-Indian and anti-Muslim League. “
Except for the above statement, everything else she claims to know about her father is nothing but British government BS.
It was more than just the marriages and mistresses themselves. The British women insisted that there be a disconnection from “the natives” that is difficult to imagine in our society.
The British soon existed on “islands” surrounded by Indians they no longer had anything to do with. The relationship turned from mutual advantage to one of pure exploitation.
It became elitism in its ugliest form, accompanied by the belief that nothing the Indians did had any importance, so was of little interest. Much as the American Colonies revolted over “taxation without representation” of tea, the Indians did so over salt.
It is arguable that in either case, the lack of responsive government was just as onerous as the offensive taxation.
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