![]() ![]() The reasons for this selection are not mentioned in those minutes. Generals – Tuker and Goddard – who were senior to him. Interestingly, the committee made this choice over two other Lt. In the minutes of the meeting of the Defence Committee held on Octo(when the battle to protect lives and property from invaders pouring into J&K from across the border was raging), Sir Roy was appointed to stand in for General Sir Robert McGregor Macdonald Lockhart – independent India’s first Army Commander-in-Chief, who was to travel to the UK. While continuing my research on the circumstances surrounding J&K’s accession to India and its aftermath, I came across the name of Sir Roy Bucher in certain records in the NAI. I will respond to that criticism on an appropriate occasion this year. Some readers generously conferred on me the title “Pakistani agent” simply because the contents of the multi-colour electronic copy of the IoA accessed from the National Archives of India (NAI) matched with a re-typed version published on some website maintained in that country. Readers will remember my article about J&K’s Instrument of Accession (IoA) published here in 2016. The story of the quest for the Roy Bucher papers Later he is said to have married Maureen Helen Susan Gibson in Calcutta in February 1946. His first wife, Edith Margaret Reid, died in Bangalore in December 1944. He was awarded the Military Cross for his services during World War I and made a Companion of the Order of the Bath and later Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army in January 1948 and served until 15 January, 1949. After World War II, he was appointed General Officer Commanding, Bengal and Assam Area and later posted as the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Command in 1946. He studied at the Edinburgh Academy and was commissioned from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst as a Second Lieutenant in the Indian Army in 1914.Īccording to the profile of the Chiefs of the Indian Army published on its official website, Bucher saw action during both world wars. Photo: GODL-Indiaįrancis Robert Roy Bucher was born in North Leith, Edinburgh on 31 August, 1895. General Sir Francis Robert Roy Bucher, Former Commander-in-Chief, Indian Army. The accusations were unnecessary because the issue at the heart of The Guardian story is quite simple: Shouldn’t the Bucher papers held in India be available to researchers in India so that those who cannot afford – or have no desire – to travel to London may access them? Others joined the fray, claiming the news report was politically biased. ![]() Another scholar tweeted that he had read scholarly works citing these papers and accused The Guardian of “careless reporting which could help bigots”. While this seemed like yet another news report about the tendency of government to err on the side of secrecy instead of transparency, one scholar was quick to note that Bucher’s papers have been available at the National Army Museum, London, for a long time and chided T he Guardian for not knowing better than to publish its story. This despite the NMML head’s supposed recommendation to the government to throw open these papers to researchers. The papers also contain correspondence between high level government functionaries (and we know this for a fact from publicly available documents) whose sensitivity apparently remains undiminished even after the passage of more than seven decades. She was told that the Ministry of External Affairs is reluctant to drop the “closed” tag fearing probable adverse impact on India’s international relations. The reporter said she had spoken to an unnamed government source who appeared to be privy to the contents of some of these papers. ![]() I know this for a fact because my RTI intervention to make them publicly accessible is also mentioned in passing in The Guardian story. As NMML has stored them in its “closed” category of manuscripts, they are not accessible to any researcher. The records in question were handed over by Sir Roy Bucher, the second and last British Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML). Last week, The Guardian published a story about the Indian government’s unwillingness to grant researchers access to a set of files relating to developments in Jammu and Kashmir during the years 1947 to 49 – the turbulent period before and after its accession to the Indian Union. ![]()
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