Mountbatten of Burma, Lord Louis

The last Viceroy of British India, a prominent member of the British establishment (he was a cousin of King George VI). He was one of the most important military commanders of the Second World War, and was often accused of having a good deal of responsibility in the massacres which accompanied Partition in 1947. His critics reproach him for having hastened the whole process of the transfer of power without considering the inevitable casualties the carving of the Punjab would provoke. It is however unlikely, given the political situation and the desire of the British government to extract itself as quickly as possible from the Indian quagmire, that he could have followed a different course and delayed the process. There is no doubt that until the tragic end of his life (he was killed in an IRA bombing of his boat off the coast of Ireland), he always tried to minimize the cost of his Indian policies in terms of human lives in order to maintain his reputation as a statesman.