Lord Mountbatten's Letter
The evidence for the selection and
appointment of Cooverji Bhabha as the Chairman of the Delhi Emergency Committee
(which supervised and coordinated all the tasks of maintaining law & order, crowd control and
rehabilitation in the aftermath of the terrible riots that raged in Delhi after the country’s partition)
was found as a letter written by Governor-General Mountbatten on September 9,
1947. This letter is a part of the Bhabha family’s archival collection.
As the biographer, one could have used only
the information contained in the letter. I chose to reproduce the scanned
images of that document in the book, for several reasons. One, the letter
showed how meticulously correct the Governor-General was in not only
communicating the decision in writing – even in those emergency circumstances,
he writes the ‘orders’ down in his own hand without waiting for his personal
staff to type it. Two, he has the words Viceroy’s House on his letterhead cancelled
and substituted by Government House – using the old stationery and not wasting
paper. Three, he uses both sides of the paper to write on (which shows through
in the digital image). And, four, he follows correct administrative protocol by
consulting the Prime Minister and obtaining his concurrence on Cooverji’s
appointment.
These comments, as observations of the
biographer, would have marred the narrative – which, in this instance, was the
story on Cooverji Bhabha’s life and his work. But, for a social historian,
these observations were important. By reproducing the image of the letter, the
observations were conveyed – perhaps more effectively – since an image is more
effective than a thousand words!
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