By IANS
New Delhi : Lord Mountbatten considered the 1947 partition of India a "crazy" and "unworkable" idea and was disappointed that Pakistan did not make him its governor general after independence, his daughter says.
Lady Pamela Hicks told the "India Tonight" programme on CNBC to be broadcast Monday night that her father was aghast that the sub-continent had to be broken up into India and Pakistan, with the latter in two parts.
"My father thought that the whole thing was a nonsense … that the whole thing was unworkable, shall we say. The partition of India seemed to him crazy. I mean somebody once described it as an elephant with two ears … you've got East Pakistan, West Pakistan and the whole mass of India in the middle.
"It's the most crazy idea … the fact that Jinnah was determined to have his Pakistan was what was going to happen, but it made it all completely unreal, crazy and unworkable," she said.
Lady Pamela, who was with her parents when India was partitioned, vehemently denied that Lord Mountbatten was eager to give independence to the sub-continent and rush back to Britain to join the navy.
"I take great exception to cut and run. I read somewhere that somebody thought that my father was anxious to get back to the navy. Well, of course, he loved the navy. He hadn't wanted to take on this position to begin with.
"But once he took on the job there was no question that he was going to cut and run in order to return to his beloved navy. He wanted to work for the best of India and Pakistan."
Lady Pamela confessed that her father was "bitterly, bitterly" disappointed that Pakistan did not invite him to become the governor general of that country following independence.
She said: "He assumed rather that when he was invited, or going to be invited, to remain on, that he would be the governor general of both (countries) and that (Jawaharlal) Nehru would be prime minister of India and (Mohammed Ali) Jinnah would be prime minister of Pakistan.
"When it became obvious that Jinnah announced that he is going to be governor general himself then, for my father, it was a terrible problem whether to stay on or not.
"My mother actually suggested that he really ought to leave because she anticipated the feeling, that did happen in the end, that he would be accused of favouring India against Pakistan … Jinnah repulsed him and wouldn't have him otherwise he would very much have liked to have been supervising or as a counsellor to Pakistan as much as to India."
Asked if the Pakistan decision disappointed Lord Mountbatten, she replied: "Bitterly, bitterly."
Elsewhere in the interview, she said: "He had such an expectation that he would be invited to remain as governor general of Pakistan as well as India that it really floored him when he found that the Qaid-e-Azam was going to take that position himself."
She added that the independence of India, accompanied by partition of the country, was deliberately brought forward by nine months from June 1948 to August 1947 because Mountbatten "was desperate that they (Indians) should take on government … for them to have to cope with their own problems was really essential".
She said he felt that "it was essential that this (independence and partition) was brought forward … it was time for India to cope with her own problems. It was going to be their problem. They should cope with it."