Sethu Das:
It is almost three decades since the attack and the political scene has changed drastically all across the globe. What comes to your mind today when you look back at the Northern Ireland conflict?

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Timothy Knatchbull:
Well, I have written a book, an account of the healing that I went through after this attack. But it is not really a political book. It is not a book about terror or conflict. Its really a book which just describes the process of healing, which I think is — the important thing. And I recognise that there are people all over the world who have had their own 'car crashes.' In my case it happened to be a bomb! And there are many other people sadly who had similar experiences. But I must say that my message in my book is not aimed at the resolution or the analysis of conflict. But I do think that there are lessons which I learnt that I am happy to share — the key was resolving the unresolved grief in my mind; to keep my mind always open; to learn from others; to be prepared to walk in the shoes of others and to think about the situation from their point of view; to narrow the gap that existed in understanding.

The world will always have diversity and the potential for conflict. If we as individuals are able to do whatever we can in our own small way, to focus on understanding and doing whatever we can for other people, then that impulse for conflict may be in some little way reduced.

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I speak humbly as a man who has found a way of finding peace, truth, reconciliation and forgiveness in my own life when as a boy I had been unable to do these things and had therefore been left with wounds emotionally and mentally. And if somebody reading my book finds a description, a page here, a line there which in someway speaks to their own experience, then I am pleased and I wish them well. I am more interested in learning from other people than in what I have written about.

Sethu Das:
When I told someone that I am meeting with the grandson of Lord Mountbatten, the immediate reaction of that person was that Mountbatten was someone who was directly or indirectly involved in similar acts during his years as a military man. Who is closer to you — the grandfather Mountbatten or the statesman Mountbatten?

Timothy Knatchbull:
I have written this book as a family member. I think of my grandfather not in his role as an international statesman or in his role in wartime leader, but (as he used to sign his letters to me) as 'devoted old grandpapa'. I am interested in his contribution on the world stage. I understand that there are people who would feel that he as a military man had engaged in military operations which would have left people injured and maimed, dead and buried. So of course it is my duty to step into these people's shoes and to understand why they may have strong negative feelings to anybody involved in conflict. And I understand that. But I often remember that in this country you have one of the great colleges of the world called The Mahindra United World College of India in Pune. This is part of an organisation that my grandfather devoted himself to when he retired. He gave up his time and energy to enlarge a vision of international understanding and peace. And I hope that he will be remembered as a man of peace and international understanding; a man interested in the youth and the problems of today and a man who understood the forces of nationalism and respected them.

The sadness and the irony is that those nationalists within Ireland who decided to kill him were people who themselves would have benefited greatly if they had undestood this. He had come to understand the need to support nationalist causes when he was Supreme Allied Commander in South East Asia in dismantling of imperial power and in being chosen as India's first constitutional Governor General, helping it to find its way to freedom which in turn enabled it to take the leading position that it holds in the world today.

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