news details |
|
|
| Lady Pamela Mountbatten's take on Kashmir | | | ABID SHAH
EARLY TIMES REPORT
NEW DELHI, Apr 7: Lord Mountbatten's daughter Pamela has talked of great indecisiveness that afflicted the late Maharaja Hari Singh regarding the fate of Jammu and Kashmir at the time of India's independence.
In a recent interview given in London to Indian born journalist Shyam Bhatia, Pamela Mountbatten has among other things dealt with Kashmir at the time of the birth of India and Pakistan as two separate nations.
In response to a question by Bhatia whether Maharaja really imagined that Kashmir could be independent (before actually signing the accession letter in favour of India), Pamela said, "Oh he was playing just one off against the other. He could not and would not make up his mind."
In another question about whether Jinnah would have tolerated an independent Kashmir, the daughter of the last Viceroy in India said, "No it's a vantage point up there, isn't it, with Russia and all the surrounding countries. It's a place that's always been fought over because of its frontiers' enormous strategic value."
Pamela Mountbatten recounted in the interview that she called the last scion of the erstwhile princely State of Jammu and Kashmir, Dr Karan Singh, as "Tiger" while she was in India with her parents towards the final years of British rule.
Her five-page long interview published in a London-based monthly journal Asian Affairs also deals with the usual deep emotional bond between her mother Lady Edwina Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru. This has already extensively been dealt earlier by Pamela in her book India Remembered. But her take on Kashmir in the interview sheds light on the long drawn tussle that the State has been caught in.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
